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MISS  PHELPS'S  WRITINGS. 


THE   GATES  AJAR,    i  vol.    16010 41.50 

THE    GA  TES  A  JA  R.    Illustrated  with  12  fuU-page  drawings  by 

JESSIE  CURTIS.     With  red-line  border,     i  vol.     4to.    Cloth 3,55 

THE    TROTTY  BOOK.     A  charming  Juvenile.     Profusely  Illus- 
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•»•  far  sirle  fy  all  Booksellers.    Stnt,  fost-fnict,  an  rmif  of  fria  ty  the 
Publislurs, 


JAMES  R.  OSGOOD  &  CO.,  Boston. 


THE    GATES   AJAR. 


BY 


ELIZABETH    STUART   PHELPS. 


"  Splendor  !     Immensity  .'     Etemi'ty  !     Grand  words  !    Great  things  !    A  little 
definite  happiness  would  be  more  10  the  purpose."  —  MADAME  DE  GASPARIN. 


BOSTON: 
JAMES    R.    OSGOOD    AND    COMPANY, 

LATE.  TICKNOR  &  FIELDS,  AND  FIELDS,  OSGOOD,  &  Co. 
1878. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress  in  the  years  1868  and  1869,  by 

FIELDS,    OSGOOD,    tc    CO., 
in  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  District  of  Massachusetts. ' 


College 
Library 

PS 
3H2, 


To  my  father,  whose  life,  like  a  perfume  from  beyond 
the  Gates,  penetrates  every  life  which  approaches  it,  the 
readers  of  this  little  book  will  owe  whatever  pleasant  thing 
they  may  find  within  its  pages. 

E.  S.  P. 

ANDOVER,  October  22,  1868. 


115 


71  f,7 

e  JUJf  3 


THE    GATES    AJAR. 


I. 

ONE  week ;  only  one  week  to-day,  this  twenty- 
first  of  February. 

I  had  been  sitting  here  in  the  dark  and  thinking 
about  it,  till  it  seems  so  horribly  long  and  so  hor- 
ribly short ;  it  has  been  such  a  week  to  live  through, 
and  it  is  such  a  small  part  of  the  weeks  that  must 
be  lived  through,  that  I  could  think  no  longer,  but 
lighted  my  lamp  and  opened  my  desk  to  find  some- 
thing to  do. 

I  was  tossing  my  paper  about,  —  only  my  own  : 
the  packages  in  the  yellow  envelopes  I  have  not 
been  quite  brave  enough  to  open  yet,  —  when  I 
came  across  this  poor  little  book  in  which  I  used 
to  keep  memoranda  of  the  weather,  and  my  lovers, 
when  I  was  a  school-girl.  I  turned  the  leaves,  smil- 
ing to  see  how  many  blank  pages  were  left,  and  took 
up  my  pen,  and  now  I  am  not  smiling  any  more. 

I  A 


2  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

If  it  had  not  come  exactly  as  it  did,  it  seems  to 
me  as  if  I  could  bear  it  better.  They  tell  me  that 
it  should  not  have  been  such  a  shock.  "Your 
brother  had  been  in  the  army  so  long  that  you 
should  have  been  prepared  for  anything.  Every- 
body knows  by  what  a  hair  a  soldier's  life  is  always 
hanging,"  and  a  great  deal  more  that  I  am  afraid  I 
have  not  listened  to.  I  suppose  it  is  all  true ;  but 
that  never  makes  it  any  easier. 

The  house  feels  like  a  prison.  I  walk  up  and 
down  and  wonder  that  I  ever  called  it  home.  Some- 
thing is  the  matter  with  the  sunsets  ;  they  come 
and  go,  and  I  do  not  notice  them.  Something  ails 
the  voices  of  the  children,  snowballing  down  the 
street ;  all  the  music  has  gone  out  of  them,  and 
they  hurt  me  like  knives.  The  harmless,  happy 
children  !  —  and  Roy  loved  the  little  children. 

Why,  it  seems  to  me  as  if  the  world  were  spin- 
ning around  in  the  light  and  wind  and  laughter,  and 
God  just  stretched  down  His  hand  one  morning 
and  put  it  out. 

It  was  such  a  dear,  pleasant  world  to  be  put  out ! 

It  was  never  dearer  or  more  pleasant  than  it  was 
on  that  morning.  I  had  been  as  happy  for  weeks. 
I  came  up  from  the  Post-Office  singing  to  myself. 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  3 

His  letter  was  so  bright  and  full  of  mischief !  I  had 
not  had  one  like  it  all  the  winter.  I  have  laid  it 
away  by  itself,  filled  with  his  jokes  and  pet  names, 
"  Mamie  "  or  "  Queen  Mamie "  every  other  line, 
and  signed 

"  Until  next  time,  your  happy 

"  ROY." 

I  wonder  if  all  brothers  and  sisters  keep  up  the 
baby-names  as  we  did.  I  wonder  if  I  shall  ever 
become  used  to  living  without  them. 

I  read  the  letter  over  a  great  many  times,  and 
stopped  to  tell  Mrs.  Bland  the  news  in  it,  and 
wondered  what  had  kept  it  so  long  on  the  way,  and 
wondered  if  it  could  be  true  that  he  would  have  a 
furlough  in  May.  It  seemed  too  good  to  be  true. 
If  I  had  been  fourteen  instead  of  twenty-four,  I 
should  have  jumped  up  and  down  and  clapped  my 
hands  there  in  the  street.  The  sky  was  so  bright 
that  I  could  scarcely  turn  up  my  eyes  to  look  at 
it.  The  sunshine  was  shivered  into  little  lances  all 
over  the  glaring  white  crust.  There  was  a  snow- 
bird chirping  and  pecking  on  the  maple-tree  as  I 
came  in. 

I  went  up  and  opened  my  window ;  sat  down  by 


4  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

it  and  drew  a  long  breath,  and  began  to  count  the 
days  till  May.  I  must  have  sat  there  as  much  as 
half  an  hour.  I  was  so  happy  counting  the  days 
that  I  did  not  hear  the  front  gate,  and  when  I 
looked  down  a  man  stood  there,  —  a  great  rough 
man,  —  who  shcmted  up  that  he  was  in  a  hurry,  and 
wanted  seventy -five  cents  for  a  telegram  that  he  had 
brought  over  from  East  Homer.  I  believe  I  went 
down  and  paid  him,  sent  him  away,  came  up  here 
and  locked  the  door  before  I  read  it. 

Phoebe  found  me  here  at  dinner-time. 

If  I  could  have  gone  to  him,  could  have  busied 
myself  with  packing  and  journeying,  could  have 
been  forced  to  think  and  plan,  could  have  had  the 
shadow  of  a  hope  of  one  more  look,  one  word,  I 
suppose  I  should  have  taken  it  differently.  Those 
two  words —  "  Shot  dead  "  —  shut  me  up  and  walled 
me  in,  as  I  think  people  must  feel  shut  up  and 
walled  in,  in  Hell.  I  write  the  words  most  sol- 
emnly, for  I  know  that  there  has  been  Hell  in  my 
heart. 

It  is  all  over  now.  He  came  back,  and  they 
brought  him  up  the  steps,  and  I  listened  to  their 
feet,  —  so  many  feet  ;  he  used  to  come  bounding 
in.  They  let  me  see  him  for  a  minute,  and  there 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  5 

was  a  funeral,  and  Mrs.  Bland  came  over,  and  she 
and  Phoebe  attended  to  everything,  I  suppose.  I 
did  not  notice  nor  think  till  we  had  left  him  out 
there  in  the  cold  and  had  come  back.  The  windows 
of  his  room  were  opened,  and  the  bitter  wind 
swept  in.  The  house  was  still  and  damp.  Nobody 
was  there  to  welcome  me.  Nobody  would  ever 
be  *  *  *  * 

Poor  old  Phcebe !  I  had  forgotten  her.  She 
was  waiting  at  the  kitchen  window  in  her  black 
bonnet ;  she  took  off  my  things  and  made  me  a 
cup  of  tea,  and  kept  at  work  near  me  for  a  little 
while,  wiping  her  eyes.  She  came  in  just  now, 
when  I  had  left  my  unfinished  sentence  to  dry, 
sitting  here  with  my  face  in  my  hands. 

"  Laws  now,  Miss  Mary,  my  dear !  This  won't 
never  do,  —  a  rebellin'  agin  Providence,  and  singe- 
in'  your  hair  on  the  lamp  chimney  this  way! 
The  dining-room  fire 's  goin'  beautiful,  and  the  sal- 
mon is  toasted  to  a  brown.  Put  away  them  papers 
and  come  right  along  ! " 


THE    GATES    AJAR. 


II. 

February  23. 
"XT  7 HO  originated  that  most  exquisite  of  inqui- 

•  *      sitions,  the  condolence  system  ? 

A  solid  blow  has  in  itself  the  elements  of  its 
rebound  ;  it  arouses  the  antagonism  of  the  life  on 
which  it  falls  ;  its  relief  is  the  relief  of  a  combat. 

But  a  hundred  little  needles  pricking  at  us,  — 
what  is  to  be  done  with  them  ?  The  hands  hang 
down,  the  knees  are  feeble.  We  cannot  so  much 
as  gasp,  because  they  are  little  needles. 

.  I  know  that  there  are  those  who  like  these  calls ; 
but  why,  in  the  name  of  all  sweet  pity,  must  we 
endure  them  without  respect  of  persons,  as  we 
would  endure  a  wedding  reception  or  make  a 
party-call  ? 

Perhaps  I  write  excitedly  and  hardly.  I  feel 
excited  and  hard. 

I  am  sure  I  do  not  mean  to  be  ungrateful  for 
real  sorrowful  sympathy,  however  imperfectly  it 
may  be  shown,  or  that  near  friends  (if  one  has 
them)  cannot  give,  in  such  a  time  as  this,  actual 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  7 

strength,  even  if  they  fail  of  comfort,  by  look  and 
tone  and  love.  But  it  is  not  near  friends  who  are 
apt  to  wound,  nor  real  sympathy  which  sharpens 
the  worst  of  the  needles.  It  is  the  fact  that  all 
your  chance  acquaintances  feel  called  upon  to 
bring  their  curious  eyes  and  jarring  words  right 
into  the  silence  of  your  first  astonishment ;  taking 
you  in  a  round  of  morning  calls  with  kid  gloves 
and  parasol,  and  the  liberty  to  turn  your  heart 
about  and  cut  into  it  at  pleasure.  You  may  quiver 
at  every  touch,  but  there  is  no  escape,  because  it  is 
"  the  thing." 

For  instance  :  Meta  Tripp  came  in  this  after- 
noon, —  I  have  refused  myself  to  everybody  but 
Mrs,  Bland,  before,  but  Meta  caught  me  in  the  par- 
lor, and  there  was  no  escape.  She  had  come,  it 
was  plain  enough,  because  she  must,  and  she  had 
come  early,  because,  she  too  having  lost  a  brother 
in  the  war,  she  was  expected  to  be  very  sorry  for 
me.  Very  likely  she  was,  and  very  likely  she  did 
the  best  she  knew  how,  but  she  was  —  not  as  un- 
comfortable as  I,  but  as  uncomfortable  as  she  could 
be,  and  was  evidently  glad  when  it  was  over.  She 
observed,  as  she  went  out,  that  I  should  n't  feel  so 
sad  by  and  by.  She  felt  very  sad  at  first  when 


8  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

Jack  died,  but  everybody  got  over  that  after  a  time. 
The  girls  were  going  to  sew  for  the  Fair  next  week 
at  Mr.  Quirk's,  and  she  hoped  I  would  exert  my- 
self and  come. 
Ah,  well :  — 

"  First  learn  to  love  one  living  man, 
Then  mayst  thou  think  upon  the  dead.' 

It  is  not  that  the  child  is  to  be  blamed  for  not 
knowing  enough  to  stay  away  ;  but  her  coming 
here  has  made  me  wonder  whether  I  am  different 
from  other  women  ;  why  Roy  was  so  much  more 
to  me  than  many  brothers  are  to  many  sisters.  I 
think  it  must  be  that  there  never  was  another  like 
Roy.  Then  we  have  lived  together  so  long,  we 
two  alone,  since  father  died,  that  he  had  grown  to 
me,  heart  of  my  heart,  and  life  of  my  life.  It  did 
not  seem  as  if  he  could  be  taken,  and  I  be  left. 

Besides,  I  suppose  most  young  women  of  my 
age  have  their  dreams,  and  a  future  probable  or 
possible,  which  makes  the  very  incompleteness  of 
life  sweet,  because  of  the  symmetry  which  is  wait- 
ing somewhere.  But  that  was  settled  so  long  ago 
for  me  that  it  makes  it  very  different.  Roy  was  all 
there  was. 


THE     GATES    AJAR.  9 

February  26. 

Death  and  Heaven  could  not  seem  very  different 
to  a  Pagan  from  what  they  seem  to  me. 

I  say  this  deliberately.  It  has  been  deliberately 
forced  upon  me.  That  of  which  I  had  a  faint  con- 
sciousness in  the  first  shock  takes  shape  now.  I  do 
not  see  how  one  with  such  thoughts  in  her  heart  as 
I  have  had  can  possibly  be  "  regenerate,"  or  stand 
any  chance  of  ever  becoming  "  one  of  the  redeemed." 
And  here  I  am,  what  I  have  been  for  six  years,  a 
member  of  an  Evangelical  church,  in  good  and 
regular  standing ! 

The  bare,  blank  sense  of  physical  repulsion  from 
death,  which  was  all  the  idea  I  had  of  anything 
when  they  first  brought  him  home,  has  not  gone  yet. 
It  is  horrible.  It  was  cruel.  Roy,  all  I  had  in  the 
wide  world,  —  Roy,  with  the  flash  in  his  eyes,  with 
his  smile  that  lighted  the  house  all  up ;  with  his 
pretty,  soft  hair  that  I  used  to  curl  and  kiss  about 
my  finger,  his  bounding  step,  his  strong  arms  that 
folded  me  in  and  cared  for  me,  —  Roy  snatched 
away  in  an  instant  by  a  dreadful  God,  and  laid  out 
there  in  the  wet  and  snow,  —  in  the  hideous  wet 
and  snow,  —  never  to  kiss  him,  never  to  see  him 
any  more  !  *  *  *  * 
i* 


IO  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

He  was  a  good  boy.  Roy  was  a  good  boy.  He 
must  have  gone  to  Heaven.  But  I  know  nothing 
about  Heaven.  It  is  very  far  off.  In  my  best  and 
happiest  days,  I  never  liked  to  think  of  it.  If  I  were 
to  go  there,  it  could  do  me  no  good,  for  I  should 
not  see  Roy.  Or  if  by  chance  I  should  see  him 
standing  up  among  the  grand,  white  angels,  he 
would  not  be  the  old  dear  Roy.  I  should  grow  so 
tired  of  singing  !  Should  long  and  fret  for  one  little 
talk,  —  for  I  never  said  good  by,  and  — 

I  will  stop  this. 

A  scrap  from  the  German  of  Burger,  which  I  came 
across  to-day,  shall  be  copied  here. 

"  Be  calm,  my  child,  forget  thy  woe, 
And  think  of  God  and  Heaven  ; 
Christ  thy  Redeemer  hath  to  thee 
Himself  for  comfort  given. 

"  O  mother,  mother,  what  is  Heaven  ? 
O  mother,  what  is  Hell  ? 
To  be  with  Wilhelm,  —  that 's  my  Heaven  ? 
Without  him,  —  that 's  my  Hell.  " 

February  27. 

Miss  Meta  Trip,  in  the  ignorance  of  her  little  silly 
heart,  has  done  me  a  great  mischie£ 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  II 

Phoebe  prepared  me  for  it,  by  observing,  when 
she  came  up  yesterday  to  dust  my  room,  that  "  folks 
was  all  sayin'  that  Mary  Cabot "  —  (Homer  is  not 
an  aristocratic  town,  and  Phoebe  doffs  and  dons  my 
title  at  her  own  sweet  will)  — "  that  Mary  Cabot 
was  dreadful  low  sence  Royal  died,  and  had  n't 
ought  to  stay  shut  up  by  herself,  day  in  and  day 
out.  It  was  behaving  con-trary  to  the  will  of  Provi- 
dence, and  very  bad  for  her  health,  too."  Moreover, 
Mrs.  Bland,  who  called  this  morning  with  her  three 
babies,  —  she  never  is  able  to  stir  out  of  the  house 
without  those  children,  poor  thing  !  —  lingered 
awkwardly  on  the  door-steps  as  she  went  away, 
and  hoped  that  Mary  my  dear  would  n't  take  it 
unkindly,  but  she  did  wish  that  I  would  exert  my- 
self more  to  see  my  friends  and  receive  comfort  in 
my  affliction.  She  did  n't  want  to  interfere,  or 
bother  me,  or  —  but  —  people  would  talk,  and  — 

My  good  little  minister's  wife  broke  down  all  in  a 
blush,  at  this  point  in  her  "  porochial  duties "  (I 
more  than  suspect  that  her  husband  had  a  hand  in 
the  matter),  so  I  took  pity  on  her  embarrassment, 
and  said,  smiling,  that  I  would  think  about  it. 

I  see  just  how  the  leaven  has  spread.  Miss  Meta, 
a  little  overwhelmed  and  a  good  deal  mystified  by 


12  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

her  call  here,  pronounces  "  poor  Mary  Cabot  so  sad  ; 
she  would  n't  talk  about  Royal ;  and  you  could  n't 
persuade  her  to  come  to  the  Fair  ;  and  she  was  so 
sober  !  —  why,  it  was  dreadful !  " 

Therefore,  Homer  has  made  up  its  mind  that  I 
shall  become  resigned  in  an  arithmetical  manner, 
and  comforted  according  to  the  Rule  of  Three. 

I  wish  I  could  go  away  !  I  wish  I  could  go  away 
and  creep  into  the  ground  and  die  !  If  nobody  need 
ever  speak  any  more  words  to  me  !  If  anybody  only 
knew  what  to  say  ! 

Little  Mrs.  Bland  has  ever  been  very  kind,  and  I 
thank  her  with  all  my  heart.  But  she  does  not 
know.  She  does  not  understand.  Her  happy  heart 
is  bound  up  in  her  little  live  children.  She  never 
laid  anybody  away  under  the  snow  without  a  chance 
to  say  good  by. 

As  for  the  minister,  he  came,  of  course,  as  it  was, 
proper  that  he  should,  before  the  funeral,  and  once 
after.  He  is  a  very  good  man,  but  I  am  afraid  of 
him,  and  I  am  glad  that  he  has  not  come  again. 

Night. 

I  can  only  repeat  and  re-echo  what  I  wrote  this 
noon.  If  anybody  knew  what  to  say  1 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  I£ 

Just  after  supper  I  heard  the  door-bell,  and,  look- 
ing out  of  the  window,  I  caught  a  glimpse  of  Deacon 
Quirk's  old  drab  felt  hat,  on  the  upper  step.  My 
heart  sank,  but  there  was  no  help  for  me.  I  waited 
for  Phoebe  to  bring  up  his  name,  desperately  listen- 
ing to  her  heavy  steps,  and  letting  her  knock  three 
times  before  I  answered.  I  confess  to  having  taken 
my  hair  down  twice,  washed  my  hands  to  a  most 
unnecessary  extent,  and  been  a  long  time  brushing 
my  dress  ;  also  to  forgetting  my  handkerchief,  and 
having  to  go  back  for  it  after  I  was  down  stairs. 
Deacon  Quirk  looked  tired  of  waiting.  I  hope  he 
was. 

O,  what  an  ill-natured  thing  to  say !  What  is 
coming  over  me  ?  What  would  Roy  think  ?  What 
could  he  ? 

"  Good  evening,  Mary,"  said  the  Deacon,  severely, 
when  I  went  in.  Probably  he  did  not  mean  to 
speak  severely,  but  the  truth  is,  I  think  he  was  a 
little  vexed  that  I  had  kept  him  waiting.  I  said 
good  evening,  and  apologized  for  my  delay,  and  sat 
down  as  far  from  him  as  I  conveniently  could.  There 
was  an  awful  silence.  "  I  came  in  this  evening," 
said  the  Deacon,  breaking  it  with  a  cough,  "  I  came 
—  hem  !  —  to  confer  with  you  — " 


14  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

I  looked  up.  "  I  thought  somebody  had  ought 
to  come,"  continued  the  Deacon,  "  to  confer  with 
you  as.  a  Christian  brother  on  your  spiritooal  con- 
dition." 

I  opened  my  eyes. 

"  To  confer  with  you  on  your  spiritooal  condi- 
tion," repeated  my  visitor.  "  I  understand  that  you 
have  had  some  unfortoonate  exercises  of  mind 
under  your  affliction,  and  I  observed  that  you  ab- 
sented yourself  from  the  Communion  Table  last 
Sunday." 

"I  did." 

rt  Intentionally  ? " 

"  Intentionally." 

He  seemed  to  expect  me  to  say  something  more  ; . 
and,  seeing   that  there  was  no  help   for  it,  I  an- 
swered. 

"  I  did  not  feel  fit  to  go.  I  should  not  have 
dared  to  go.  God  does  not  seem  to  me  just  now 
what  He  used  to.  He  has  dealt  very  bitterly  with 
me.  But,  however  wicked  I  may  be,  I  will  not 
mock  Him.  I  think,  Deacon  Quirk,  that  I  did 
right  to  stay  away." 

"  Well,"  said  the  Deacon,  twirling  his  hat  with 
3  puzzled  look,  "  perhaps  you  did.  But  I  don't  see 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  15 

the  excuse  for  any  such  feelings  as  would  make  it 
necessary.  I  think  it  my  duty  to  tell  you,  Mary, 
that  I  am  sorry  to  see  you  in  such  a  rebellious 
state  of  mind." 

I  made  no  reply. 

"  Afflictions  come  from  God,"  he  observed,  look- 
ing at  me  as  impressively  as  if  he  supposed  that 
I  had  never  heard  the  statement  before.  "  Afflic- 
tions come  from  God,  and,  however  afflictin'  or 
however  crushin'  they  may  be,  it  is  our  duty  to 
submit  to  them.  Glory  in  triboolation,  St.  Paul 
says,  glory  in  triboolation."  I  continued  silent. 

"  I  sympathize  with  you  in  this  sad  dispensa- 
tion," he  proceeded.  "Of  course  you  was  very 
fond  of  Royal ;  it 's  natural  you  should  be,  quite 
natural  —  "  He  stopped,  perplexed,  I  suppose,  by 
something  in  my  face.  "  Yes,  it 's  very  natural ; 
poor  human  nature  sets  a  great  deal  by  earthly 
props  and  affections.  But  it 's  your  duty,  as  a 
Christian  and  a  church-member,  to  be  resigned." 

I  tapped  the  floor  with  my  foot.  I  began  to 
think  that  I  could  not  bear  much  more. 

"  To  be  resigned,  my  dear  young  friend.  To 
say  '  Abba,  Father,'  and  pray  that  the  will  of  the 
Lord  be  done." 


16  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

"  Deacon  Quirk  !  "  said  I,  "  I  am  not  resigned. 
I  pray  the  dear  Lord  with  all  my  heart  to  make  me 
so,  but  I  will  not  say  that  I  am,  until  I  am,  —  if 
ever  that  time  comes.  As  for  those  words  about 
the  Lord's  will,  I  would  no  more  take  them  on  my 
lips  than  I  would  blasphemy,  unless  I  could  speak 
them  honestly,  —  and  that  I  cannot  do.  We  had 
better  talk  of  something  else  now,  had  we  not  ? " 

Deacon  Quirk  looked  at  me.  It  struck  me  that 
he  would  look  very  much  so  at  a  Mormon  or  a 
Hottentot,  and  I  wondered  whether  he  were  going 
to  excommunicate  me  on  the  spot. 

As  soon  as  he  began  to  speak,  however,  I  saw 
that  he  was  only  bewildered,  —  honestly  bewil- 
dered, and  honestly  shocked :  I  do  not  doubt  that 
I  had  said  bewildering  and  shocking  things. 

"  My  friend,"  he  said,  solemnly,  "  I  shall  pray  for 
you  and  leave  you  in  the  hands  of  God.  Your 
brother,  whom  He  has  removed  from  this  earthly 
life  for  His  own  wise — " 

"  We  will  not  talk  any  more  about  Roy,  if  you 
please,"  I  interrupted  ;  "  he  is  happy  and  safe." 

"  Hem  !  —  I  hope  so,"  he  replied,  moving  un- 
easily in  his  chair  ;  "  I  believe  he  never  made  a 
profession  of  religion,  but  there  is  no  limit  to  the 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  I/ 

mercy  of  God.  It  is  very  unsafe  for  the  young  to 
think  that  they  can  rely  on  a  death-bed  repentance, 
but  our  God  is  a  covenant-keeping  God,  and  Roy- 
al's mother  was  a  pious  woman.  If  you  cannot 
say  with  certainty  that  he  is  numbered  among  the 
redeemed,  you  are  justified,  perhaps,  in  hoping  so." 
I  turned  sharply  on  him,  but  words  died  on  my 
lips.  How  could  I  tell  the  man  of  that  short,  dear 
letter  that  came  to  me  in  December,  —  that  Roy's 
was  no  death-bed  repentance,  but  the  quiet,  natural 
growth  of  a  life  that  had  always  been  the  life  of 
the  pure  in  heart ;  of  his  manly  beliefs  and  unself- 
ish motives  ;  of  that  dawning  sense  of  friendship 
with  Christ  of  which  he  used  to  speak  so  modestly, 
dreading  lest  he  should  not  be  honest  with  himself? 
"  Perhaps  I  ought  not  to  call  myself  a  Christian," 
he  wrote,  —  I  learned  the  words  by  heart,  —  "  and 
I  shall  make  no  profession  to  be  such,  till  I  am 
sure  of  it,  but  my  life  has  not  seemed  to  me  for  a 
long  time  to  be  my  own.  '  Bought  with  a  price ' 
just  expresses  it.  I  can  point  to  no  time  at  which 
I  was  conscious  by  any  revolution  of  feeling  of 'ex- 
periencing a  change  of  heart,'  but  it  seems  to  me 
that  a  man's  heart  might  be  changed  for  all  that. 
I  do  not  know  that  it  is  necessary  for  us  to  be  able 


18  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

to  watch  every  footprint  of  God.  The  way  is  all 
that  concerns  us,  —  to  see  that  we  follow  it  and 
Him.  This  I  am  sure  of;  and  knocking  about  in 
this  army  life  only  convinces  me  of  what  I  felt  in  a 
certain  way  before,  —  that  it  is  the  only  way,  and 
He  the  only  guide  to  follow." 

But  how  could  I  say  anything  of  this  to  Deacon 
Quirk  ?  —  this  my  sealed  and  sacred  treasure,  of 
all  that  Roy  left  me  the  dearest.  At  any  rate  I 
did  not.  It  seemed  both  obstinate  and  cruel  in 
him  to  come  there  and  say  what  he  had  been  say- 
ing. He  might  have  known  that  I  would  not  say 
that  Roy  had  gone  to  Heaven,  if —  why,  if  there 
had  been  the  breath  of  a  doubt.  It  is  a  possibility 
of  which  I  cannot  rationally  conceive,  but  I  sup- 
pose that  his  name  would  never  have  passed  my 
lips. 

So  I  turned  away  from  Deacon  Quirk,  and  shut 
my  mouth,  and  waited  for  him  to  finish.  Whether 
the  idea  began  to  struggle  into  his  mind  that  he 
might  not  have  been  making  a  very  comforting 
remark,  I  cannot  say  ;  but  he  started  very  soon  to 

g°- 

"  Supposing  you  are  right,  and  Royal  was  saved 

at  the  eleventh  hour,"  he  said  at  parting,  with  one 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  19 

of  his  stolid  efforts  to  be  consolatory,  that  are 
worse  than  his  rebukes,  "  if  he  is  singing  the  song 
of  Moses  and  the  Lamb  (he  pointed  with  his  big, 
dingy  thumb  at  the  ceiling),  he  does  n't  rebel 
against  the  doings  of  Providence.  All  his  affec- 
tions are  subdued  to  God,  —  merged,  as  you  might 
say, —  merged  in  worshipping  before  the  great 
White  Throne.  He  does  n't  think  this  miser'ble 
earthly  spere  of  any  importance,  compared  with 
that  eternal  and  exceeding  weight  of  glory.  In 
the  appropriate  words  of  the  poet,  — 

'  O,  not  to  one  created  thing 

Shall  our  embrace  be  given, 
But  all  our  joy  shall  be  in  God, 
For  only  God  is  Heaven.' 

Those  are  very  spiritooal  and  scripteral  lines,  and 
it 's  very  proper  to  reflect  how  true  they  are." 

I  saw  him  go  out,  and  came  up  here  and  locked 
myself  in,  and  have  been  walking  round  and  round 
the  room.  I  must  have  walked  a  good  while,  for  I 
feel  as  weak  as  a  baby. 

Can  the  man  in  any  state  of  existence  be  made 
to  comprehend  that  he  has  been  holding  me  on  the 
rack  this  whole  evening  ? 

Yet  he  came  under  a  strict  sense  of  duty,  and  in 


2O  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

the  kindness  of  all  the  heart  he  has  !  I  knew,  or  I 
ought  to  know,  that  he  is  a  good  man,  —  far  better 
in  the  sight  of  God  to-night,  I  do  not  doubt,  than  I 
am. 

But  it  hurts,  —  it  cuts,  —  that  thing  which  he  said 
as  he  went  out ;  because  I  suppose  it  must  be  true  ; 
because  it  seems  to  me  greater  than  I  can  bear  to 
have  it  true. 

Roy,  away  in  that  dreadful  Heaven,  can  have  no 
thought  of  me,  cannot  remember  how  I  loved  him, 
how  he  left  me  all  alone.  The  singing  and  the 
worshipping  must  take  up  all  his  time.  God  wants 
it  all.  He  is  a  "  Jealous  God."  I  am  nothing  any 
more  to  Roy. 

March  2. 

And  once  I  was  much,  —  very  much  to  him  ! 

His  Mamie,  his  poor  Queen  Mamie,  —  dearer, 
he  used  to  say,  than  all  the  world  to  him,  —  I  don't 
see  how  he  can  like  it  so  well  up  there  as  to  forget 
her.  Though  Roy  was  a  very  good  boy.  But  this 
poor,  wicked  little  Mamie,  —  why,  I  fall  to  pitying 
her  as  if  she  were  some  one  else,  and  wish  that  some 
one  would  cry  over  her  a  little.  I  can't  cry. 

Roy  used  to  say  a  thing,  —  I  have  not  the  words, 
but  it  was  like  this,  —  that  one  must  be  either  very 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  21 

young  or  very  ungenerous,  if  one  could  find  time  to 
pity  one's  self. 

I  have  lain  for  two  nights,  with  my  eyes  open  all 
night  long.  I  thought  that  perhaps  I  might  see 
him.  I  have  been  praying  for  a  touch,  a  sign,  only 
for  something  to  break  the  silence  into  which  he  has 
gone.  But  there  is  no  answer,  none.  The  light 
burns  blue,  and  I  see  at  last  that  it  is  morning,  and 
go  down  stairs  alone,  and  so  the  day  begins. 

Something  of  Mrs.  Browning's  has  been  keeping 
a  dull,  mechanical  time  in  my  brain  all  day. 

"  God  keeps  a  niche 

In  Heaven  to  hold  our  idols  :  .  .  .  .  albeit 
He  brake  them  to  our  faces,  and  denied 
That  our  close  kisses  should  impair  their  white." 

But  why  must  He  take  them  ?  And  why  should 
He  keep  them  there  ?  Shall  we  ever  see  them 
framed  in  their  glorious  gloom  ?  Will  He  let  us 
touch  them  then  ?  Or  must  we  stand  like  a  poor 
worshipper  at  a  Cathedral,  looking  up  at  his  pictured 
saint  afar  off  upon  the  other  side  ? 

Has  everything  stopped  just  here  ?  Our  talks 
together  in  the  twilight,  our  planning  and  hoping 
and  dreaming  together  ;  our  walks  and  rides  and 
laughing  ;  our  reading  and  singing  and  loving,  — 
these,  then,  are  all  gone  out  forever  ? 


22  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

God  forgive  the  words  !  but  Heaven  will  never  be 
Heaven  to  me  without  them. 

March  4. 

Perhaps  I  had  better  not  write  any  more  here 
after  this. 

On  looking  over  the  leaves,  I  see  that  the  little 
green  book  has  become  an  outlet  for  the  shallower 
part  of  pain. 

Meta  Tripp  and  Deacon  Quirk,  gossip  and  sym- 
pathy that  have  buzzed  into  my  trouble  and  annoyed 
me  like  wasps  (we  are  apt  to  make  more  fuss  over 
a  wasp-sting  than  a  sabre-cut),  just  that  proportion 
of  suffering  which  alone  can  ever  be  put  into  words, 
^-  the  surface. 

I  begin  to  understand  what  I  never  understood 
till  now,  —  what  people  mean  by  the  luxury  of  grief. 
No,  I  am  sure  that  I  never  understood  it,  because 
my  pride  suffered  as  much  as  any  part  of  me  in  that 
other  time.  I  would  no  more  have  spent  two  con- 
secutive hours  drifting  at  the  mercy  of  my  thoughts 
than  I  would  have  put  my  hand  into  the  furnace 
fire.  The  right  to  mourn  makes  everything  differ- 
ent. Then,  as  to  mother,  I  was  very  young  when 

she  died,  and  father,  though  I  loved  him,  was  never 

« 

to  me  what  Roy  has  been. 


THE     GATES    AJAR.  23 

This  luxury  of  grief,  like  all  luxuries,  is  pleasure- 
able.  Though,  as  I  was  saying,  it  is  only  the 
shallow  part  of  one  's  heart  —  I  imagine  that  the 
deepest  hearts  have  their  shallows  —  which  can  be 
filled  by  it,  still  it  brings  a  shallow  relief. 

Let  it  be  confessed  to  this  honest  book,  that, 
driven  to  it  by  desperation,  I  found  in  it  a  wretched 
sort  of  content. 

Being  a  little  stronger  now  physically,  I  shall  try 
to  be  a  little  braver ;  it  will  do  no  harm  to  try.  So 
I  seem  to  see  that  it  was  the  content  of  poison,  — 
salt-water  poured  between  shipwrecked  lips. 

At  any  rate,  I  mean  to  put  the  book  away  and 
lock  it  up.  .Roy  used  to  say  that  he  did  not  be- 
lieve in  journals.  I  begin  to  see  why. 


24  THE    GATES    AJAR. 


III. 

March  7. 

T  HAVE  taken  out  my  book,  and  am  going  to 
•*•  write  again.  But  there  is  an  excellent  reason. 
I  have  something  else  than  myself  to  write  about. 

This  morning  Phoebe  persuaded  me  to  walk 
down  to  the  office,  "  To  keep  up  my  spirits  and  get 
some  salt  pork." 

She  brought  my  things  and  put  them  on  me 
while  I  was  hesitating  ;  tied  my  victorine  and  but- 
toned my  gloves  ;  warmed  my  boots,  and  fussed 
about  me  as  if  I  had  been  a  baby.  It  did  me  good 
to  be  taken  care  of,  and  I  thanked  her  softly;  a 
little  more  softly  than  I  am  apt  to  speak  to  Phoebe. 

"  Bless  your  soul,  my  dear ! "  she  said,  winking 
briskly,  "  I  don't  want  no  thanks.  It 's  thanks 
enough  jest  to  see  one  of  your  old  looks  comin' 
over  you  for  a  spell,  sence  — " 

She  knocked  over  a  chair  with  her  broom,  and 
left  her  sentence  unfinished.  Phoebe  has  always 
had  a  queer,  clinging,  superior  sort  of  love  for  us 
both.  She  dandled  us  on  her  knees,  and  made  all 


THE     GATES    AJAR.  2$ 

our  rag-dolls,  and  carried-  us  through  measles  and 
mumps  and  the  rest.  Then  mother's  early  death 
threw  all  the  care  upon  her.  I  believe  that  in  her 
secret  heart  she  considers  me  more  her  child  than 
her  mistress.  It  cost  a  great  many  battles  to  be- 
come established  as  "  Miss  Mary." 

"  I  should  like  to  know,"  she  would  say,  throw- 
ing back  her  great  square  shoulders  and  towering 
up  in  front  of  me,  —  "I  should  like  to  know  if  you 
s'pose  I  'm  a  goin'  to  '  Miss '  anybody  that  I  Ve 
trotted  to  Bamberry  Cross  as  many  times  as  I  have 
you,  Mary  Cabot !  Catch  me  !  " 

I  remember  how  she  would  insist  on  calling  me 
"  her  baby  "  after  I  was  in  long  dresses,  and  that  it 
mortified  me  cruelly  once  when  Meta  Tripp  was 
here  to  tea  with  some  Boston  cousins.  Poor,  good 
Phcebe !  Her  rough  love  seems  worth  more  to  me, 
now  that  it  is  all  I  have  left  me  in  the  world.  It 
occurs  to  me  that  I  may  not  have  taken  notice 
enough  of  her  lately.  She  has  done  her  honest 
best  to  comfort  me,  and  she  loved  Roy,  too. 

But  about  the  letter.  I  wrapped  my  face  up 
closely  in  the  crepe,  so  that,  if  I  met  Deacon  Quirk, 
he  should  not  recognize  me,  and,  thinking  that  the 
air  was  pleasant  as  I  walked,  came  home  with  the 


26  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

pork  for  Phoebe  and  a  letter  for  myself.  I  did  not 
open  it  ;  in  fact,  I  forgot  all  about  it,  till  I  had 
been  at  home  for  half  an  hour.  I  cannot  bear  to 
open  a  letter  since  that  morning  when  the  lances 
of  light  fell  on  the  snow.  They  have  written  to 
me  from  everywhere,  —  uncles  and  cousins  and  old 
school-friends  ;  well-meaning  people ;  saying  each 
the  same  thing  in  the  same  way,  —  no,  not  that 
exactly,  and  very  likely  I  should  feel  hurt  and 
lonely  if  they  did  not  write  ;  but  sometimes  I  wish 
it  did  not  all  have  to  be  read. 

So  I  did  not  notice  much  about  my  letter  this 
morning,  till  presently  it  occurred  to  me  that  what 
must  be  done  had  better  be  done  quickly  ;  so  I 
drew  up  my  chair  to  the  desk,  prepared  to  read 
and  answer  on  the  spot.  Something  about  the 
writing  and  the  signature  rather  pleased  me :  it 
was  dated  from  Kansas,  and  was  signed  with  the 
name  of  my  mother's  youngest  sister,  Winifred 
Forceythe.  I  will  lay  the  letter  in  between  these 
two  leaves,  for  it  seems  to  suit  the  pleasant,  spring- 
like day  ;  besides,  I  took  out  the  green  book  again 
on  account  of  it. 

LAWRENCE,  KANSAS,  February  21. 

MY  DEAR  CHILD,  —  I  have  been  thinking  how 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  2/ 

happy  you   will   be   by  and   by   because   Roy   is 
happy. 

And  yet  I  know  —  I  understand  — 

You  have  been  in  all  my  thoughts,  and  they 
have  been  such  pitiful,  tender  thoughts,  that  I  can- 
not help  letting  you  know  that  somebody  is  sorry 
for  you.  For  the  rest,  the  heart  knoweth  its  own, 
and  I  am,  after  all,  too  much  of  a  stranger  to  my 
sister's  child  to  intermeddle. 

So  my  letter  dies  upon  my  pen.  You  cannot 
bear  words  yet.  How  should  I  dare  to  fret  you 
with  them  ?  I  can  only  reach  you  by  my  silence, 
and  leave  you  with  the  Heart  that  bled  and  broke 
for  you  and  Roy. 

Your  Aunt, 

WINIFRED  FORCEYTHE. 

POSTSCRIPT,  February  23. 

I  open  my  letter  to  add,  that  I  am  thinking  of 
coming  to  New  England  with  Faith,  —  you  know 
Faith  and  I  have  nobody  but  each  other  now.  In- 
deed, I  may  be  on  my  way  by  the  time  this  reaches 
you.  It  is  just  possible  that  I  may  not  come  back 
to  the  West.  I  shall  be  for  a  time  at  your  uncle 
Calvin's,  and  then  my  husband's  friends  think  that 


28  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

they  must  have  me.  I  should  like  to  see  you  for  a 
day  or  two,  but  if  you  do  not  care  to  see  me,  say 
so.  If  you  let  me  come  because  you  think  you 
must,  I  shall  find  it  out  from  your  face  in  an  hour. 
I  should  like  to  be  something  to  you,  or  do  some- 
thing for  you  ;  but  if  I  cannot,  I  would  rather  not 
come. 

I  like  that  letter. 

I  have  written  to  her  to  come,  and  in  such  a  way 
that  I  think  she  will  understand  me  to  mean  what 
I  say.  I  have  not  seen  her  since  I  was  a  child.  I 
know  that  she  was  very  much  younger  than  my 
mother  ;  that  she  spent  her  young  ladyhood  teach- 
ing at  the  South  ;  —  grandfather  had  enough  with 
which  to  support  her,  but  I  have  heard  it  said  that 
she  preferred  to  take  care  of  herself ;  —  that  she 
finally  married  a  poor  minister,  whose  sermons 
people  liked,  but  whose  coat  was  shockingly 
shabby  ;  that  she  left  the  comforts  and  elegances 
and  friends  of  New  England  to  go  to  the  West 
and  bury  herself  in  an  unheard-of  little  place  with 
him  (I  think  she  must  have  loved  him) ;  that  he 
afterwards  settled  in  Lawrence  ;  that  there,  after 
they  had  been  married  some  childless  years,  this 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  2Q 

little  Faith  was  born ;  and  that  there  Uncle  For- 
ceythe  died  about  three  years  ago  ;  that  is  about  all 
I  know  of  her.  I  suppose  her  share  of  Grandfather 
Burleigh's  little  property  supports  her  respectably. 
I  understand  that  she  has  been  living  a  sort  of 
missionary  life  among  her  husband's  people  since 
his  death,  and  that  they  think  they  shall  never  see 
her  like  again.  It  is  they  who  keep  her  from 
coming  home  again,  Uncle  Calvin's  wife  told  me 
once  ;  they  and  one  other  thing,  —  her  husband's 
grave. 

I  hope  she  will  come  to  see  me.  I  notice  one 
strange  thing  about  her  letter.  She  does  not  use  the 
ugly  words  "  death  "  and  "  dying."  I  don't  know 
exactly  what  she  put  in  their  places,  but  something 
that  had  a  pleasant  sound. 

"  To  be  happy  because  Roy  is  happy."  I  wonder 
if  she  really  thinks  it  is  possible. 

I  wonder  what  makes  the  words  chase  me  about 


3O  THE    GATES    AJAR. 


IV. 

May  5. 

T  AM  afraid  that  my  brave  resolutions  are  all 
-*•  breaking  down. 

The  stillness  of  the  May  days  is  creeping  into 
everything  ;  the  days  in  which  the  furlough  was  to 
come  ;  in  which  the  bitter  Peace  has  come  instead, 
and  in  which  he  would  have  been  at  home,  never  to 
go  away  from  me  any  more. 

The  lazy  winds  are  choking  me.  Their  faint 
sweetness  makes  me  sick.  The  moist,  rich  loam  is 
ploughed  in  the  garden  ;  the  grass,  more  golden 
than  green,  springs  in  the  warm  hollow  by  the  front 
gate  ;  the  great  maple,  just  reaching  up  to  tap  at 
the  window,  blazes  and  bows  under  its  weight  of 
scarlet  blossoms.  I  cannot  bear  their  perfume  ;  it 
comes  up  in  great  breaths,  when  the  window  is 
opened.  I  wish  that  little  cricket,  just  waked  from 
his  winter's  nap,  would  not  sit  there  on  the  sill  and 
chirp  at  me.  I  hate  the  bluebirds  flashing  in  and 
out  of  the  carmine  cloud  that  the  maple  makes,  and 
singing,  singing,  everywhere. 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  31 

It  is  easy  to  understand  how  Bianca  heard  "  The 
nightingales  sing  through  her  head,"  how  she  could 
call  them  "  Owl-like  birds,"  who  sang  "  for  spite," 
who  sang  "  for  hate,"  who  sang  "  for  doom." 

Most  of  all  I  hate  the  maple.  I  wish  winter  were 
back  again  to  fold  it  away  in  white,  with  its  bare, 
black  fingers  only  to  come  tapping  at  the  window. 
"  Roy's  maple  "  we  used  to  call  it.  How  much  fun 
he  had  out  of  that  old  tree  ! 

As  far  back  as  I  can  remember,  we  never  con, 
sidered  spring  to  be  officially  introduced  till  we  had 
had  a  fight  with  the  red  blossoms.  Roy  used  to 
pelt  me  well ;  but  with  that  pretty  chivalry  of  his, 
which  was  rare  in  such  a  little  fellow,  which  devel- 
oped afterwards  into  that  rarer  treatment  of  women, 
of  which  every  one  speaks  who  speaks  of  him,  he 
would  stop  the  play  the  instant  it  threatened  rough- 
ness. I  used  to  be  glad,  though,  that  I  had  strength 
and  courage  enough  to  make  it  some  fun  to  him. 

The  maple  is  full  of  pictures  of  Roy.  Roy,  not 
yet  over  the  dignity  of  his  first  boots,  aiming  for  the 
cross-barred  branch,  coming  to  the  ground  with  a 
terrible  wrench  on  his  ankle,  straight  up  again 
before  anybody  could  stop  him,  and  sitting  there  on 
the  ugly  swaying  bough  as  white  as  a  sheet,  to  wave 


32  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

his  cap,  —  "There/ 1  meant  to  do  it,  and  I  have  !n 
Roy,  chopping  off  the  twigs  for  kindling-wood  in  his 
mud  oven,  and  sending  his  hatchet  right  through 
the  parlor  window.  Roy  cutting  leaves  for  me,  and 
then  pulling  all  my  wreaths  down  over  my  nose 
every  time  I  put  them  on  !  Roy  making  me  jump 
half-way  across  the  room  with  a  sudden  thump  on 
my  window,  and  looking  out,  I  would  see  him  with 
his  hat  off  and  hair  blown  from  his  forehead,  framed 
in  by  the  scented  blossoms,  or  the  quivering  green, 
or  the  flame  of  blood-red  leaves.  But  there  is  no 
end  to  them  if  I  begin. 

I  had  planned,  if  he  came  this  week,  to  strip  the 
richest  branches,  and  fill  his  room. 

May  6. 

The  May-day  stillness,  the  lazy  winds,  the  sweet^ 
ness  in  the  air,  are  all  gone.  A  miserable  north- 
easterly storm  has  set  in.  The  garden  loam  is  a 
mass  of  mud  ;  the  golden  grass  is  drenched  ;  the 
poor  little  cricket  is  drowned  in  a  mud-puddle  ;  the 
bluebirds  are  huddled  among  the  leaves,  with  their 
heads  under  their  drabbled  wings,  and  the  maple 
blossoms,  dull  and  shrunken,  drip  against  the  glass. 

It  begins  to  be  evident  that  it  will  never  do  for 
me  to  live  alone.  Yet  who  is  there  in  the  wide 


THE     GATES     AJAR.  33 

world  that  I  could  bear  to  bring  here  —  into  Roy's 
place  ? 

A  little  old-fashioned  book,  bound  in  green  and 
gold,  attracted  my  attention  this  morning  while  I 
was  dusting  the  library.  It  proved  to  be  my 
mother's  copy  of  "  Elia,"  —  one  that  father  had 
given  her,  I  saw  by  the  fly-leaf,  in  their  early  en- 
gagement days.  It  is  some  time  since  I  read 
Charles  Lamb  ;  indeed,  since  the  middle  of  Feb- 
ruary I  have  read  nothing  of  any  sort.  Phoebe 
dries  the  Journal  for  me  every  night,  and  sometimes 
I  glance  at  the  Telegraphic  Summary,  and  some- 
times I  don't. 

"  You  used  to  be  fond  enough  of  books,"  Mrs. 
Bland  says,  looking  puzzled,  —  regular  blue-stock- 
ing, Mr.  Bland  called  you  (no  personal  objection  to 
you,  of  course,  my  dear,  but  he  does  n't  like  literary 
women,  which  is  a  great  comfort  to  me).  Why  don't 
you  read  and  divert  yourself  now  ?  " 

But  my  brain,  like  the  rest  of  me,  seems  to  be 
crushed.  I  could  not  follow  three  pages  of  history 
with  attention.  Shakespeare,  Wordsworth,  Whit- 
tier,  Mrs.  Browning,  are  filled  with  Roy's  marks,  — 
and  so  down  the  shelf.  Besides,  poetry  strikes  as 
nothing  else  does,  deep  into  the  roots  of  things. 


34  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

One  finds  everywhere  some  strain  at  the  fibres  of 
one's  heart.  A  mind  must  be  healthily  reconciled 
to  actual  life,  before  a  poet  —  at  least  most  poets  — 
can  help  it.  We  must  learn  to  bear  and  to  work, 
before  we  can  spare  strength  to  dream. 

To  hymns  and  hymn-like  poems,  exception  should 
be  made.  Some  of  them  are  like  soft  hands  steal- 
ing into  ours  in  the  dark,  and  holding  us  fast  with- 
out a  spoken  word.  I  do  not  know  how  many 
times  Whittier's  "  Psalm,"  and  that  old  cry  of  Cow- 
per's,  "  God  moves  in  a  mysterious  way,"  have 
quieted  me, — just  the  sound  of  the  words  ;  when 
I  was  too  wild  to  take  in  their  meaning,  and  too 
wicked  to  believe  them  if  I  had. 

As  to  novels,  (by  the  way,  Meta  Tripp  sent  me 
over  four  yesterday  afternoon,  among  which  notice 
"Aurora  Floyd"  and  "Uncle  Silas,")  the  author 
of  "  Rutledge "  expresses  my  feeling  about  them 
precisely.  I  do  not  remember  her  exact  words, 
but  they  are  not  unlike  these.  "  She  had  far  out- 
lived the  passion  of  ordinary  novels  ;  and  the  few 
which  struck  the  depths  of  her  experience  gave  her 
more  pain  than  pleasure." 

However,  I  took  up  poor  "  Elia "  this  morning, 
and  stumbled  upon  "Dream  Children,"  to  which, 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  35 

for  pathos  and  symmetry,  I  have  read  few  things 
superior  in  the  language.  Years  ago,  I  almost 
knew  it  by  heart,  but  it  has  slipped  out  of  memory 
with  many  other  things  of  late.  Any  book,  if  it  be 
one  of  those  which  Lamb  calls  "  books  which  are 
books,"  put  before  us  at  different  periods  of  life,  will 
unfold  to  us  new  meanings, — wheels  within  wheels, 
delicate  springs  of  purpose  to  which,  at  the  last 
reading,  we  were  stone-blind  ;  gems  which  perhaps 
the  author  ignorantly  cut  and  polished. 

A  sentence  in  this  "  Dream  Children,"  which  at 
eighteen  I  passed  by  with  a  compassionate  sort  of 
wonder,  only  thinking  that  it  gave  me  "  the  blues  " 
to  read  it,  and  that  I  was  glad  Roy  was  alive,  I 
have  seized  upon  and  learned  all  over  again  now. 
I  write  it  down  to  the  dull  music  of  the  rain. 

"  And  how  when  he  died,  though  he  had  not 
been  dead  an  hour,  it  seemed  as  if  he  had  died  a 
great  while  ago,  such  a  distance  there  is  betwixt 
life  and  death  ;  and  how  I  bore  his  death,  as  I 
thought,  pretty  well  at  first,  but  afterwards  it 
haunted  and  haunted  me  ;  and  though  I  did  not 
cry  or  take  it  to  heart  as  some  do,  and  as  I  think 
he  would  have  done  if  I  had  died,  yet  I  missed  him 
all  day  long,  and  knew  not  till  then  how  much  I 


36  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

had  loved  him.  I  missed  his  kindness  and  I  missed 
his  crossness,  and  wished  him  to  be  alive  again  to 
be  quarrelling  with  him  (for  we  quarrelled  some- 
times), rather  than  not  have  him  again." 

How  still  the  house  is !  I  can  hear  the  coach 
rumbling  away  at  the  half-mile  corner,  coming  up 
from  the  evening  train.  A  little  arrow  of  light  has 
just  cut  the  gray  gloom  of  the  West. 

Ten  o'clock. 

The  coach  to  which  I  sat  listening  rumbled  up  to 
the  gate  and  stopped.  Puzzled  for  the  moment, 
and  feeling  as  inhospitable  as  I  knew  how,  I  went 
down  to  the  door.  The  driver  was  already  on  the 
steps,  with  a  bundle  in  his  arms  that  proved  to 
be  a  rather  minute  child ;  and  a  lady,  veiled,  was 
just  stepping  from  the  carriage  into  the  rain.  Of 
course  I  came  to  my  senses  at  that,  and,  calling 
to  Phcebe  that  Mrs.  Forceythe  had  come,  sent 
her  out  an  umbrella. 

She  surprised  me  by  running  lightly  up  the 
steps.  I  had  imagined  a  somewhat  advanced  age 
and  a  sedate  amount  of  infirmities,  to  be  necessary 
concomitants  of  aunthood.  She  came  in  all  spark- 
ling with  rain-drops,  and,  gently  pushing  aside  the 


THE     GATES    AJAR.  37 

hand  with  which  I  was  trying  to  pay  her  driver, 
said,  laughing  :  — 

"  Here  we  are,  bag  and  baggage,  you  see,  '  big 
trunk,  little  trunk,'  &c.,  &c.  You  did  not  expect 
me  ?  Ah,  my  letter  missed  then.  It  is  too  bad  to 
take  you  by  storm  in  this  way.  Come,  Faith ! 
No,  don't  trouble  about  the  trunks  just  now.  Shall 
I  go  right  in  here  ? " 

Her  voice  had  a  sparkle  in  it,  like  the  drops  on 
her  veil,  but  it  was  low  and  very  sweet.  I  took 
her  in  by  the  dining-room  fire,  and  was  turning  to 
take  off  the  little  girl's  things,  when  a  soft  hand 
stayed  me,  and  I  saw  that  she  had  drawn  off  the 
wet  veil.  A  face  somewhat  pale  looked  down  at 
me,  —  she  is  taller  than  I,  — with  large,  compas- 
sionate eyes. 

"  I  am  too  wet  to  kiss  you,  but  I  must  have  a 
look,"  she  said,  smiling.  "  That  will  do.  You  are 
like  your  mother,  very  like." 

I  don't  know  what  possessed  me,  whether  it  was 
the  sudden,  sweet  feeling  of  kinship  with  some- 
thing alive,  or  whether  it  was  her  face  or  her  voice, 
or  all  together,  but  I  said  :  — 

"  I  don't  think  you  are  too  wet  to  be  kissed,"  and 
threw  my  arms  about  her  neck,  —  I  am  not  of  the 


38  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

kissing  kind,  either,  and  I  had  on  my  new  bom- 
bazine, and  she  was  very  wet. 

I  thought  she  looked  pleased. 

Phoebe  was  sent  to  open  the  register  in  the  blue 
room,  and  as  soon  as  it  was  warm  I  went  up  with 
them,  leading  Faith  by  the  hand.  I  am  unused  to 
children,  and  she  kept  stepping  on  my  dress,  and 
spinning  around  and  tipping  over,  in  the  most 
astonishing  manner.  It  strikingly  reminded  me 
of  a  top  at  the  last  gasp.  Her  mother  observed 
that  she  was  tired  and  sleepy.  Phoebe  was  waiting 
around  awkwardly  up  stairs,  with  fresh  towels  on 
her  arm.  Aunt  Winifred  turned  and  held  out  her 
hand. 

"  Well,  Phoebe,  I  am  glad  to  see  you.  This  is 
Phoebe,  I  am  sure  ?  You  have  altered  with  every- 
thing else  since  I  was  here  before.  You  keep 
bright  and  well,  I  hope,  and  take  good  care  of  Miss 
Mary  ?  " 

It  was  a  simple  enough  thing,  to  be  sure,  her 
taking  the  trouble  to  notice  the  old  servant,  with 
whom  she  had  scarcely  ever  exchanged  a  half- 
dozen  words  ;  but  I  liked  it.  I  liked  the  way,  too, 
in  which  it  was  done.  It  reminded  me  of  Roy's 
fine,  well-bred  manner  towards  his  inferiors, — al- 


THE     GATES    AJAR.  39 

ways  cordial,  yet  always  appropriate  ;  I  have  heard 
that  our  mother  had  much  the  same. 

I  tried  to  make  things  look  as  pleasant  as  I 
could  down  stairs,  while  they  were  making  ready 
for  tea.  The  grate  was  raked  up  a  little,  a  bright 
supper-cloth  laid  on  the  table,  and  the  curtains 
drawn.  Phcebe  mixed  a  hasty  cake  of  some  sort, 
and  brought  out  the  heavier  pieces  of  silver,  —  tea- 
pot, &c.,  which  I  do  not  use  when  I  am  alone, 
because  it  is  so  much  trouble  to  take  care  of  them, 
and  because  I  like  the  little  Wedgwood  set  that 
Roy  had  for  his  chocolate. 

"  How  pleasant !  "  said  Aunt  Winifred,  as  she 
sat  down  with  Faith  in  a  high  chair  beside  her. 
Phcebe  had  a  great  hunt  up  garret  for  that  chair  ; 
it  has  been  stowed  away  there  since  it  and  I  parted 
company.  "  How  pleasant  everything  is  here  !  I 
believe  in  bright  dining-rooms.  There  is  an  inde- 
scribable dinginess  to  most  that  I  have  seen,  which 
tends  to  anything  but  thankfulness.  Homesick, 
Faith  ?  No  ;  that 's  right.  I  don't  think  we  shall 
be  homesick  at  Cousin  Mary's." 

If  she  had  not  said  that,  the  probabilities  are 
Jiat  they  would  have  been,  for  I  have  fallen  quite 
out  of  the  way  of  active  housekeeping,  and  have 


4O  THEGATESAJAR. 

• 

almost  forgotten  how  to  entertain  a  friend.  But 
I  do  not  want  her  good  opinion  wasted,  and  mean 
they  shall  have  a  good  time  if  I  can  make  it  for 
them. 

It  was  a  little  hard  at  first  to  see  her  opposite 
me  at  the  table ;  it  was  Roy's  place. 

While  she  was  sitting  there  in  the  light,  with  the 
dust  and  weariness  of  travel  brushed  away  a  little, 
I  was  able  to  make  up  my  mind  what  this  aunt  of 
mine  looks  like. 

She  is  young,  then,  to  begin  with,  and  I  find  it 
necessary  to  reiterate  the  fact,  in  order  to  get  it 
into  my  stupid  brain.  The  cape  and  spectacles, 
the  little  old  woman's  shawl  and  invalid's  walk,  for 
which  I  had  prepared  myself,  persist  in  hovering 
before  my  bewildered  eyes,  ready  to  drop  down  on 
her  at  a  moment's  notice.  Just  thirty-five  she  is 
by  her  own  showing  ;  older  than  I,  to  be  sure  ;  but 
as  we  passed  in  front  of  the  mirror  together,  once 
to-night,  I  could  not  see  half  that  difference  be- 
tween us.  The  peace  of  her  face  and  the  pain  of 
mine  contrast  sharply,  and  give  me  an  old,  worn 
look,  beside  her.  After  all,  though,  to  one  who 
had  seen  much  of  life,  hers  would  be  the  true  ma- 
turity perhaps,  —  the  maturity  of  repose.  A  look 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  4! 

in  her  eyes  once  or  twice  gave  me  the  impression 
that  she  thinks  me  rather  young,  though  she  is  far 
too  wise  and  delicate  to  show  it.  I  don't  like  to  be 
treated  like  a  girl.  I  mean  to  find  out  what  she 
does  think. 

My  eyes  have  been  on  her  face  the  whole  even- 
ing, and  I  believe  it  is  the  sweetest  face  —  woman's 
face  —  that  I  have  ever  seen.  Yet  she  is  far  from 
being  a  beautiml  woman.  It  is  difficult  to  say  what 
makes  the  impression  ;  scarcely  any  feature  is  ac- 
curate, yet  the  tout  ensemble  seems  to  have  no  fault 
Her  hair,  which  must  have  been  bright  bronze 
once,  has  grown  gray  —  quite  gray  —  before  its 
time.  I  really  do  not  know  of  what  color  her  eyes 
are ;  blue,  perhaps,  most  frequently,  but  they 
change  with  every  word  that  she  speaks ;  when 
quiet,  they  have  a  curious,  far-away  look,  and  a 
steady,  lambent  light  shines  through  them.  Her 
mouth  is  well  cut  and  delicate,  yet  you  do  not  so 
much  notice  that  as  its  expression.  It  looks  as  if 
it  held  a  happy  secret,  with  which,  however  near 
one  may  come  to  her,  one  can  never  intermeddle. 
Yet  there  are  lines  about  it  and  on  her  forehead, 
which  are  proof  plain  enough  that  she  has  not 
always  floated  on  summer  seas.  She  yet  wears 


42  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

her  widow's  black,  but  relieves  it  pleasantly  by 
white  at  the  throat  and  wrists.  Take  her  alto- 
gether, I  like  to  look  at  her. 

Faith  is  a  round,  rolling,  rollicking  little  piece 
of  mischief,  with  three  years  and  a  half  of  ex- 
perience in  this  very  happy  world.  She  has  black 
eyes  and  a  pretty  chin,  funny  little  pink  hands 
all  covered  with  dimples,  and  a  dimple  in  one 
cheek  besides.  She  has  tipped  over  two  tumblers 
of  water,  scratched  herself  all  over  playing  with 
the  cat,  and  set  her  apron  on  fire  already  since  she 
has  been  here.  I  stand  in  some  awe  of  her;  but 
after  I  have  become  initiated,  I  think  we  shall  be 
very  good  friends.  "  Of  all  names  in  the  catalogue," 
I  said  to  her  mother,  when  she  came  down  into  the 
parlor  after  putting  her  to  bed,  "  Faith  seems  to  be 
about  the  most  inappropriate  for  this  solid- bodied, 
twinkling  little  bairn  of  yours,  with  her  pretty  red 
cheeks,  and  such  an  appetite  for  supper ! " 

"  Yes,"  she  said,  laughing,  "  there  is  nothing 
spirituelle  about  Faith.  But  she  means  just  that 
to  me.  I  could  not  call  her  anything  else.  Her 
father  gave  her  the  name."  Her  face  changed,  but 
did  not  sadden  ;  a  quietness  crept  into  it  and  into 
her  voice,  but  that  was  all. 


THE     GATES     AJAR.  43 

"  I  will  tell  you  about  it  some  time,  —  perhaps," 
she  added,  rising  and  standing  by  the  fire.  "  Faith 
looks  like  him."  Her  eyes  assumed  their  distant 
look,  "like  the  eyes  of  those  who  see  the  dead," 
and  gazed  away, —  so  far  away,  into  the  fire,  that 
I  felt  that  she  would  not  be  listening  to  anything 
that  I  might  say,  and  therefore  said  nothing. 

We  spent  the  evening  chatting  cosily.  After 
the  fire  had  died  down  in  the  grate  (I  had  Phoebe 
light  a  pine-knot  there,  because  I  noticed  that 
Aunt  Winifred  fancied  the  blaze  in  the  dining- 
room),  we  drew  up  our  chairs  into  the  corner  by 
the  register,  and  roasted  away  to  our  hearts'  con- 
tent A  very  bad  habit  to  sit  over  the  register,  and 
Aunt  Winifred  says  she  shall  undertake  to  break 
me  of  it.  We  talked  about  everything  under  the 
sun,  —  uncles,  aunts,  cousins,  Kansas  and  Connec- 
ticut, the  surrenders  and  the  assassination,  books, 

» 
pictures,  music,   and  Faith,  —  O,  and  Phoebe  and 

the  cat.  Aunt  Winifred  talks  well,  and  does  not 
gossip  nor  exhaust  her  resources  ;  one  feels  always 
that  she  has  material  in  reserve  on  any  subject 
that  is  worth  talking  about. 

For  one  thing  I  thank  her  with  all  my  heart : 
she  never  spoke  of  Roy. 


44  THE     GATES    AJAR. 

Upon  reflection,  I  find  that  I  have  really  passed 
a  pleasant  evening. 

She  knocked  at  my  door  just  now,  after  I  had 
written  the  last  sentence,  and  had  put  away  the 
book  for  the  night.  Thinking  that  it  was  Phoebe, 
I  called,  "  Come  in,"  and  did  not  turn.  She  had 
come  to  the  bureau,  where  I  stood  unbraiding  my 
hair,  and  touched  my  arm,  before  I  saw  who  it 
was.  She  had  on  a  crimson  dressing-gown  of 
warm  flannel,  and  her  hair  hung  down  on  her 
shoulders.  Although  so  gray,  her  hair  is  massive 
yet,  and  coils  finely  when  she  is  dressed. 

"  I  beg  your  pardon,"  she  said,  "  but  I  thought 
you  would  not  be  in  bed,  and  I  came  in  to  say, 
—  let  me  sit  somewhere  else  at  the  breakfast-table, 
if  you  like.  I  saw  that  I  had  taken  '  the  vacant 
place.'  Good  night,  my  dear." 

It  was  such  a  little  thing  !  I  wonder  how  many 
people  would  have  noticed  it  or  taken  the  trouble 
to  speak  of  it.  The  quick  perception,  the  unusual 
delicacy,  —  these,  too,  are  like  Roy. 

I  almost  wish  that  she  had  stayed  a  little  longer. 
I  almost  think  that  I  could  bear  to  have  her  speak 
to  me  about  him. 


THE     GATES    AJAR.  45 

Faith,  in  the  next  room,  seems  to  have  wakened 
from  a  frightened  dream,  and  I  can  hear  their 
voices  through  the  wall.  Her  mother  is  soothing 
and  singing  to  her  in  the  broken  words  of  some 
old  lullaby  with  which  Phoebe  used  to  sing  Roy 
and  me  to  sleep,  years  and  years  ago.  The  un- 
familiar, home-like  sound  is  pleasant  in  the  silent 
house.  Phoebe,  on  her  way  to  bed,  is  stopping  on 
the  garret-stairs  to  listen  to  it.  Even  the  cat 
comes  mewing  up  to  the  door,  and  purring  as  I 
have  not  heard  the  creature  purr  since  the  old 
Sunday-night  singing,  hushed  so  long  ago. 


THE    GATES    AJAR. 


V. 

May  7. 

I  WAS  awakened  and  nearly  smothered  this 
morning  by  a  pillow  thrown  directly  at  my 
head. 

Somewhat  unaccustomed,  in  the  respectable,  old 
maid's  life  that  I  lead,  to  such  a  pleasant  little 
method  of  salutation,  I  jerked  myself  upright,  and 
stared.  There  stood  Faith  in  her  night-dress, 
laughing  as  if  she  would  suffocate,  and  her  mother, 
in  search  of  her,  was  just  knocking  at  the  open 
door. 

"  She  insisted  on  going  to  wake  Cousin  Mary, 
and  would  n't  be  washed  till  I  let  her ;  but  I  stipu- 
lated that  she  should  kiss  you  softly  on  both  your 
eyes." 

"  I  did,"  said  Faith,  stoutly  ;  "  I  kissed  her  eyes, 
both  two  of  'em,  and  her  nose,  and  her  mouth,  and 
her  neck ;  then  I  pulled  her  hair,  and  then  I 
spinched  her ;  but  I  thought  she  'd  have  to  be 
banged  a  little.  Was  rit  it  a  bang,  though  !  " 

It  really  did  me  good  to  begin  the  day  with  a 


THE     GATES     AJAR.  47 

hearty  laugh.  The  days  usually  look  so  long  and 
blank  at  the  beginning,  that  I  can  hardly  make  up 
my  mind  to  step  out  into  them.  Faith's  pillow  was 
the  famous  pebble  in  the  pond,  to  which  authors 
of  original  imagination  invariably  resort ;  I  felt  its 
little  circles  widening  out  all  through  the  day.  I 
wonder  if  Aunt  Winifred  thought  of  that.  She 
thinks  of  many  things. 

For  instance,  afraid  apparently  that  I  should 
think  I  was  afflicted  with  one  of  those  professional 
visitors  who  hold  that  a  chance  relationship  justi- 
fies them  in  imposing  on  one  from  the  beginning 
to  the  end  of  the  chapter,  she  managed  to  make 
me  understand,  this  morning,  that  she  was  expect- 
ing to  go  back  to  Uncle  Forceythe's  brother  on 
Saturday.  I  was  surprised  at  myself  to  find  that 
this  proposition  struck  me  with  dismay.  I  insisted 
with  all  my  heart  on  keeping  her  for  a  week  at  the 
least,  and  sent  forth  a  fiat  that  her  trunks  should 
be  unpacked. 

We  have  had  a  quiet,  home-like  day.  Faith 
found  her  way  to  the  orchard,  and  installed  herself 
there  for  the  day,  overhauling  the  muddy  grass 
with  her  bare  hands  to  find  dandelions.  She  came 
in  at  dinner-time  as  brown  as  a  little  nut,  with  her 


48  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

hat  hanging  down  her  neck,  her  apron  torn,  and 
just  about  as  dirty  as  I  should  suppose  it  possible 
for  a  clean  child  to  succeed  in  making  herself. 
Her  mother,  however,  seemed  to  be  quite  used  to 
it,  and  the  expedition  with  which  she  made  her 
presentable  I  regard  as  a  stroke  of  genius.' 

While  Faith  was  disposed  of,  and  the  house  still, 
Auntie  and  I  took  our  knitting  and  spent  a  regular 
old  woman's  morning  at  the  south  window  in  the 
dining-room.  In  the  afternoon  Mrs.  Bland  came 
over,  babies  and  all,  and  sent  up  her  card  to  Mrs. 
Forceythe. 

Supper-time  came,  and  still  there  had  not  been 
a  word  of  Roy.  I  began  to  wonder  at,  while  I 
respected,  this  unusual  silence. 

While  her  mother  was  putting  Faith  to  bed,  I 
went  into  my  room  alone,  for  a  few  moments'  quiet. 
An  early  dark  had  fallen,  for  it  had  clouded  up  just 
before  sunset.  The  dull,  gray  sky  and  narrow 
horizon  shut  down  and  crowded  in  everything.  A 
soldier  from  the  village,  who  has  just  come  home, 
was  walking  down  the  street  with  his  wife  and  sis- 
ter. The  crickets  were  chirping  in  the  meadows. 
The  faint  breath  of  the  maple  came  up. 

I  sat  down  by  the  window,  and  hid  my  face  in 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  49 

both  ray  hands.  I  must  have  sat  there  some  time, 
for  I  had  quite  forgotten  that  I  had  company  to 
entertain,  when  the  door  softly  opened  and  shut, 
and  some  one  came  and  sat  down  on  the  couch 
beside  me.  I  did  not  speak,  for  I  could  not,  and, 
the  first  I  knew,  a  gentle  arm  crept  about  me,  and 
she  had  gathered  me  into  her  lap  and  laid  my  head 
on  her  shoulder,  as  she  might  have  gathered  Faith. 

"  There,"  she  said,  in  her  low,  lulling  voice,  "  now 
tell  Auntie  all  about  it." 

t  don't  know  what  it  was,  whether  the  voice,  or 
touch,  or  words,  but  it  came  so  suddenly,  —  and 
nobody  had  held  me  for  so  long,  —  that  everything 
seemed  to  break  up  and  unlock  in  a  minute,  and 
I  threw  up  my  hands  and  cried.  I  don't  know  how 
long  I  cried. 

She  passed  her  hand  softly  to  and  fro  across  my 
hair,  brushing  it  away  from  my  temples,  while  they 
throbbed  and  burned  ;  but  she  did  not  speak.  By 
and  by  I  sobbed  out :  — 

"  Auntie,  Auntie,  Auntie  ! "  as  Faith  sobs  out  in 
the  dark.  It  seemed  to  me  that  I  must  have  help 
or  die. 

"  Yes,  dear.  I  understand.  I  know  how  hard 
it  is.  And  you  have  been  bearing  it  alone  so  long  ! 
3  D 


5O  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

I  am  going  to  help  you,  and  you  must  tell  me  all 
you  can." 

The  strong,  decided  words,  "  I  am  going  to  help 
you,"  gave  me  the  first  faint  hope  I  have  had,  that 
I  could  be  helped,  and  I  could  tell  her  —  it  was  not 
sacrilege  —  the  pent-up  story  of  these  weeks.  All 
the  time  her  hand  went  softly  to  and  fro  across  my 
hair. 

Presently,  when  I  was  weak  and  faint  with  the 
new  comfort  of  my  tears,  "  Aunt  Winifred,"  I  said, 
"  I  don't  know  what  it  means  to  be  resigned*;  I 
don't  know  what  it  means  !" 

Still  her  hand  passed  softly  to  and  fro  across  my 
hair. 

"  To  have  everything  stop  all  at  once !  without 
giving  me  any  time  to  learn  to  bear  it.  Why,  you 
do  not  know,  —  it  is  just  as  if  a  great  black  gate 
had  swung  to  and  barred  out  the  future,  and  barred 
out  him,  and  left  me  all  alone  in  any  world  that 
I  can  ever  live  in,  forever  and  forever." 

"  My  child,"  she  said,  with  emphasis  solemn  and 
low  upon  the  words,  —  "  my  child,  I  do  know.  I 
think  you  forget  —  my  husband." 

I  had  forgotten.  How  could  I  ?  We  are  most 
selfishly  blinded  by  our  own  griefs.  No  other  form 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  51 

than  ours  ever  seems  to  walk  with  us  in  the  fur- 
nace. Her  few  words  made  me  feel,  as  I  could 
not  have  felt  if  she  had  said  more,  that  this  woman 
who  was  going  to  help  me  had  suffered  too  ;  had 
suffered  perhaps  more  than  I,  —  that,  if  I  sat  as 
a  little  child  at  her  feet,  she  could  teach  me 
through  the  kinship  of  her  pain. 

"  O  my  dear,"  she  said,  and  held  me  close,  "  I 
have  trodden  every  step  of  it  before  you,  —  every 
single  step." 

"  But  you  never  were  so  wicked  about  it !  You 
never  felt  —  why,  I  have  been  afraid  I  should  hate 
God  !  You  never  were  so  wicked  as  that." 

Low  under  her  breath  she  answered  "  Yes,"  — 
this  sweet,  saintly  woman  who  had  come  to  me  in 
the  dark,  as  an  angel  might. 

Then,  turning  suddenly,  her  voice  trembled  and 
broke  :  — 

"  Mary,  Mary,  do  you  think  He  could  have  lived 
those  thirty-three  years,  and  be  cruel  to  you  now? 
Think  that  over  and  over ;  only  that.  It  may  be 
the  only  thought  you  dare  to  have,  —  it  was  all  I 
dared  to  have  once, — but  cling  to  it;  cling  with 
both  hands,  Mary,  and  keep  it." 

I  only  put  both  hands  about  her  neck  and  clung 


52  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

there  ;  but  I  hope  —  it  seems,  as  if  I  clung  a  little 
to  the  thought  besides  ;  it  was  as  new  and  sweet  to 
me  as  if  I  had  never  heard  of  it  in  all  my  life  ;  and 
it  has  not  left  me  yet. 

"And  then,  my,  dear,"  she  said,  when  she  had 
let  me  cry  a  little  longer,  "when  you  have  once 
found  out  that  Roy's  God  loves  you  more  than  Roy 
does,  the  rest  comes  more  easily.  It  will  not  be  as 
long  to  wait  as  it  seems  now.  It  is  n't  as  if  you 
never  were  going  to  see  him  again." 

I  looked  up  bewildered. 

"  What 's  the  matter,  dear  ?  " 

"  Why,  do  you  think  I  shall  see  him,  —  really 
see  him  ? " 

"  Mary  Cabot,"  she  said  abruptly,  turning  to  look 
at  me,  "  who  has  been  talking  to  you  about  this 
thing  ? " 

"  Deacon  Quirk,"  I  answered  faintly,  —  "  Deacon 
Quirk  and  Dr.  Bland." 

She  put  her  other  arm  around  me  with  a  quick 
movement,  as  if  she  would  shield  me  from  Deacon 
Quirk  and  Dr.  Bland. 

"Do  I  think  you  will  see  him  again?  You 
might  as  well  ask  me  if  I  thought  God  made  you 
and  made  Roy,  and  gave  you  to  each  other.  See 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  53 

him  !  Why,  of  course  you  will  see  him  as  you  saw 
him  here." 

"  As  I  saw  him  here  !  Why,  here  I  looked  into 
his  eyes,  I  saw  him  smile,  I  touched  him.  Why, 
Aunt  Winifred,  Roy  is  an  angel ! " 

She  patted  my  hand  with  a  little,  soft,  comfort- 
ing laugh. 

"  But  he  is  not  any  the  less  Roy  for  that,  —  not 
any  the  less  your  own  real  Roy,  who  will  love  you 
and  wait  for  you  and  be  very  glad  to  see  you,  as  he 
used  to  love  and  wait  and  be  glad  when  you  came 
home  from  a  journey  on  a  cold  winter  night." 

"And  he  met  me  at  the  door,  and  led  me  in 
where  it  was  light  and  warm  ! "  I  sobbed. 

"  So  he  will  meet  you  at  the  door  in  this  other 
home,  and  lead  you  into  the  light  and  the  warmth. 
And  cannot  that  make  the  cold  and  dark  a  little 
shorter?  Think  a  minute  !" 

"  But  there  is  God,  —  I  thought  we  went  to 
Heaven  to  worship  Him,  and  — " 

"  Shall  you  worship  more  heartily  or  less,  for 
having  Roy  again  ?  Did  Mary  love  the  Master 
more  or  less,  after  Lazarus  came  back  ?  Why,  my 
child,  where  did  you  get  your  ideas  of  God  ?  Don't 
you  suppose  He  knows  how  you  love  Roy  ? " 


54  THE     GATES    AJAR. 

I  drank  in  the  blessed  words  without  doubt  or 
argument.  I  was  too  thirsty  to  doubt  or  argue. 
Some  other  time  I  may  ask  her  how  she  knows  this 
beautiful  thing,  but  not  now.  All  I  can  do  now  is 
to  take  it  into  my  heart  and  hold  it  there. 

Roy  my  own  again, — not  only  to  look  at  standing 
up  among  the  singers,  —  but  close  to  me  ;  somehow 
or  other  to  be  as  near  as  —  to  be  nearer  than  —  he 
was  here,  really  mine  again  !  I  shall  never  let  this 

go- 
After  we  had  talked  awhile,  and  when  it  came 

time  to  say  good  night,  I  told  her  a  little  about  my 
conversation  with  Deacon  Quirk,  and  what  I  said 
to  him  about  the  Lord's  will.  I  did  not  know  but 
that  she  would  blame  me. 

"  Some  time,"  she  said,  turning  her  great  com- 
passionate eyes  on  me,  —  I  could  feel  them  in  the 
dark,  —  and  smiling,  "  you  will  find  out  all  at  once, 
in  a  happy  moment,  that  you  can  say  those  words 
with  all  your  heart,  and  with  all  your  soul,  and  with 
all  your  strength  ;  it  will  come,  even  in  this  world, 
if  you  will  only  let  it.  But  until  it  does,  you  do 
right,  quite  right,  not  to  scorch  your  altar  with  a 
false  burnt-offering.  God  is  not  a  God  to  be 
mocked.  He  would  rather  have  only  the  old  cry  : 


THE     GATES    AJAR.  55 

'I  believe ;  help  mine  unbelief/  and  wait  till  you  can 
say  the  rest  It  has  often  grated  on  my  ears,"  she 
added,  "  to  hear  people  speak  those  words  unworthi- 
ly. They  seem  to  me  the  most  solemn  words  that 
the  Bible  contains,  or  that  Christian  experience  can 
utter.  As  far  as  my  observation  goes,  the  good 
people  —  for  they  are  good  people  —  who  use  them 
when  they  ought  to  know  better  are  of  two  sorts. 
They  are  people  in  actual  agony,  bewildered,  racked 
with  rebellious  doubts,  unaccustomed  to  own  even  to 
themselves  the  secret  seethings  of  sin  ;  really  per- 
suaded that  because  it  is  a  Christian  duty  to  have 
no  will  but  the  Lord's,  they  are  under  obligations  to 
affirm  that  they  have  no  will  but  the  Lord's.  Or 
else  they  are  people  who  know  no  more  about  this 
pain  of  bereavement  than  a  child.  An  affliction 
has  passed  over  them,  put  them  into  mourning, 
made  them  feel  uncomfortable  till  the  funeral  was 
over,  or  even  caused  them  a  shallow  sort  of  grief,  of 
which  each  week  evaporates  a  little,  till  it  is  gone. 
These  mourners  air  their  trouble  the  longest,  prate 
loudest  about  resignation,  and  have  the  most  to 
say  to  you  or  me  about  our  '  rebellious  state  of 
mind.'  Poor  things  !  One  can  hardly  be  vexed  at 
them  for  pity.  Think  of  being  made  so  !  " 


56  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

"  There  is  still  another  class  of  the  cheerfully 
resigned,"  I  suggested,  "  who  are  even  more  ready 
than  these  to  tell  you  of  your  desperate  wicked- 
ness —  " 

"  People  who  have  never  had  even  the  semblance 
of  a  trouble  in  all  their  lives,"  she  interrupted.' 
"  Yes,  I  was  going  to  speak  of  them.  Of  all  mis- 
erable comforters,  they  are  the  most  arrogant." 

"  As  to  real  instant  submission,"  she  said  pres- 
ently, "  there  is  some  of  it  in  the  world.  There  are 
sweet,  rare  lives  capable  of  great  loves  and  great 
pains,  which  yet  are  kept  so  attuned  to  the  life  of 
Christ,  that  the  cry  in  the  Garden  comes  scarcely 
less  honestly  from  their  lips  than  from  his.  Such, 
like  the  St.  John,  are  but  one  among  the  Twelve. 
Such,  it  will  do  you  and  me  good,  dear,  at  least 
to  remember." 

"  Such,"  I  thought  when  I  was  left  alone,  "  you 
new  dear  friend  of  mine,  who  have  come  with  such 
a  blessed  coming  into  my  lonely  days,  —  such  you 
must  be  now,  whatever  you  were  once." 

If  I  should  tell  her  that,  how  she  would  open 
her  soft  eyes  ! 


THE     GATES     AJAR.  57 


VI. 

May  9. 

A  S  I  was  looking  over  the  green  book  last 
•**•  night,  Aunt  Winifred  came  up  behind  me 
and  softly  laid  a  bunch  of  violets  down  between 
the  leaves. 

By  an  odd  contrast,  the  contented,  passionless 
things  fell  against  those  two  verses  that  were 
copied  from  the  German,  and  completely  covered 
them  from  sight.  I  lifted  the  flowers,  and  held  up 
the  page  for  her  to  see. 

As  she  read,  her  face  altered  strangely  ;  her  eyes 
dilated,  her  lip  quivered,  a  flush  shot  over  her 
cheeks  and  dyed  her  forehead  up  to"  the  waves  of 
her  hair.  I  turned  away  quickly,  feeling  that  I 
had  committed  a  rudeness  in  watching  her,  and 
detecting  in  her,  however  involuntarily,  some  far, 
inner  sympathy,  or  shadow  of  a  long-past  sym- 
pathy, with  the  desperate  words. 

"  Mary,"  she  said,  laying  down  the  book,  "  I  be- 
lieve Satan  wrote  that." 
3* 


58  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

She  laughed  a  little  then,  nervously,  and  paled 
back  into  her  quiet,  peaceful  self. 

"  I  mean  that  he  inspired  it.  They  are  wicked 
words.  You  must  not  read  them  over.  You  will 
outgrow  them  some  time  with  a  beautiful  growth 
of  trust  and  love.  Let  them  alone  till  that  time 
comes.  See,  I  will  blot  them  out  of  sight  for  you 
with  colors  as  blue  as  heaven,  —  the  real  heaven, 
where  God  will  be  loved  the  most." 

She  shook  apart  the  thick,  sweet  nosegay,  and, 
taking  a  half-dozen  of  the  little  blossoms,  pinned 
them,  dripping  with  fragrant  dew,  upon  the  lines. 
There  I  shall  let  them  stay,  and,  since  she  wishes 
it,  I  shall  not  lift  them  to  see  the  reckless  words 
till  I  can  do  it  safely. 

This  afternoon  Aunt  Winifred  has  been  telling 
me  about  herself.  Somewhat  more,  or  of  a  differ- 
ent kind,  I  should  imagine,  from  what  she  has  told 
most  people.  She  seems  to  love  me  a  little,  not  in 
a  proper  kind  of  way,  because  I  happen  to  be  her 
niece,  but  for  my  own  sake.  It  surprises  me  to 
find  how  pleased  I  am  that  she  should. 

That  Kansas  life  must  have  been  very  hard  to 
her,  in  contrast  as  it  was  with  the  smooth  elegance 
of  her  girlhood  ;  she  was  very  young,  too,  when 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  59 

she  undertook  it.  I  said  something  of  the  sort  to 
her. 

"They  have  been  the  hardest  and  the  easiest, 
the  saddest  and  the  happiest,  years  of  all  my  life," 
she  answered. 

I  pondered  the  words  in  my  heart,  while  I  lis- 
tened to  her  story.  She  gave  me  vivid  pictures 
of  the  long,  bright  bridal  journey,  overshadowed 
with  a  very  mundane  weariness  of  jolting  coaches 
and  railway  accidents  before  its  close  ;  of  the  little 
neglected  hamlet  which  waited  for  them,  twenty 
miles  from  a  post-office  and  thirty  from  a  school- 
house  ;  of  the  parsonage,  a  log-hut  among  log- 
huts,  distinguished  and  adorned  by  a  little  lath  and 
plastering,  glass  windows,  and  a  door-step  ;  —  they 
drew  in  sight  of  it  at  the  close  of  a  tired  day,  with 
a  red  sunset  lying  low  on  the  flats. 

Uncle  Forceythe  wanted  mission-work,  and  mis- 
sion-work he  found  here  with  —  I  should  say  with 
a  vengeance,  if  the  expression  were  exactly  suited 
to  an  elegantly  constructed  and  reflective  journal. 

"  My  heart  sank  for  a  moment,  I  confess,"  she 
said,  "  but  it  never  would  do,  you  know,  to  let  him 
suspect  that,  so  I  smiled  away  as  well  as  I  knew 
how,  shook  hands  with  one  or  two  women  in  red 


6O  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

calico  who  had  been  "  slickin'  up  inside,"  they  said ; 
went  in  by  the  fire,  — it  was  really  a  pleasant  fire, 
—  and,  as  soon  as  they  had  left  us  alone,  I  climbed 
into  John's  lap,  and,  with  both  arms  around  his 
neck,  told  him  that  I  knew  we  should  be  very 
happy.  And  I  said — " 

"  Said  what  ?  " 

She  blushed  a  little,  like  a  girl. 

"  I  believe  I  said  I  should  be  happy  in  Patago- 
nia —  with  him.  I  made  him  laugh  at  last,  and 
say  that  my  face  and  words  were  like  a  beautiful 
prophecy.  And,  Mary,  if  they  were,  it  was  beauti- 
fully fulfilled.  In  the  roughest  times,  —  times  of 
ragged  clothes  and  empty  flour-barrels,  of  weak- 
ness and  sickness  and  quack  doctors,  of  cold  and 
discouragement,  of  prairie  fires  and  guerillas, — 
from  trouble  to  trouble,  from  year's  end  to  year's 
end,  we  were  happy  together,  we  two.  As  long  as 
we  could  have  each  other,  and  as  long  as  we  could 
be  about  our  Master's  business,  we  felt  as  if  we  did 
not  dare  to  ask  for  anything  more,  lest  it  should 
seem  that  we  were  ungrateful  for  such  wealth  of 
mercy." 

It  would  take  too  long  to  write  out  here  the 
half  that  she  told  me,  though  I  wish  I  could,  for  it 


THE     GATES    AJAR.  6l 

interested  me  more  than  any  story  that  I  have  ever 
read. 

After  years  of  Christ-like  toiling  to  help  those 
rough  old  farmers  and  wicked  bushwhackers  to 
Heaven,  the  call  to  Lawrence  came,  and  it  seemed 
to  Uncle  Forceythe  that  he  had  better  go.  It  was 
a  pleasant,  influential  parish,  and  there,  though  not 
less  hard  at  work,  they  found  fewer  rubs  and  more 
comforts  ;  there  Faith  came,  and  there  were  their 
pleasant  days,  till  the  war.  —  I  held  my  breath  to 
hear  her  tell  about  Quantrell's  raid.  There,  too, 
Uncle  wasted  through  that  death-in-life,  consump- 
tion ;  there  he  "  fell  on  sleep,"  she  said,  and  there 
she  buried  him. 

She  gave  me  no  further  description  of  his  death 
than  those  words,  and  she  spoke  them  with  her  far- 
away, tearless  eyes  looking  off  through  the  window, 
and  after  she  had  spoken  she  was  still  for  a  time. 

The  heart  knoweth  its  own  bitterness  ;  that  grew 
distinct  to  me,  as  I  sat,  shut  out  by  her  silence. 
Yet  there  was  nothing  bitter  about  her  face. 

"  Faith  was  six  months  old  when  we  went,"  she 
said  presently.  "We  had  never  named  her  :  Baby 
was  name  enough  at  first  for  such  a  wee  thing  ; 
then  she  was  the  only  one,  and  had  come  so  late, 


62  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

that  it  seemed  to  mean  more  to  us  than  to  most  to 
have  a  baby  all  to  ourselves,  and  we  liked  the  sound 
of  the  word.  When  it  became  quite  certain  that 
John  must  go,  we  used  to  talk  it  over,  and  he  said 
that  he  would  like  to  name  her,  but  what,  he  did 
not  tell  me. 

"  At  last,  one  night,  after  he  had  lain  for  a  while 
thinking  with  closed  eyes,  he  bade  me  bring  the 
child  to  him.  The  sun  was  setting,  I  remember, 
and  the  moon  was  rising.  He  had  had  a  hard  day  ; 
the  life  was  all  scorched  out  of  the  air.  I  moved 
the  bed  up  by  the  window,  that  he  might  have  the 
breath  of  the  rising  wind.  Baby  was  wide  awake, 
cooing  softly  to  herself  in  the  cradle,  her  bits  of 
damp  curls  clinging  to  her  head,  and  her  pink  feet 
in  her  hands.  I  took  her  up  and  brought  her  just 
as  she  was,  and  knelt  down  by  the  bed.  The  street 
was  still.  We  could  hear  the  frogs  chanting  a  mile 
away.  He  lifted  her  little  hands  upon  his  own,  and 
said —  no  matter  about  the  words — but  he  told  me 
that  as  he  left  the  child,  so  he  left  the  name,  in 
my  sacred  charge.  —  that  he  had  chosen  it  for  me, 
—  that,  when  he  was  out  of  sight,  it  might  help 
me  to  have  it  often  on  my  lips. 

"  So  there  in  the  sunset  and  the  moonrise,   we 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  63 

two  alone  together,  he  baptized  her,  and  we  gave 
our  little  girl  to  God." 

When  she  had  said  this,  she  rose  and  went  over 
to  the  window,  and  stood  with  her  face  from  me. 
By  and  by,  "  It  was  the  fourteenth,"  she  said,  as  if 
musing  to  herself,  —  "  the  fourteenth  of  June." 

I  remember  now  that  Uncle  Forceythe  died  on 
the  fourteenth  of  June.  It  may  have  been  that  the 
words  of  that  baptismal  blessing  were  the  last  that 
they  heard,  either  child  or  mother. 

May  10. 

It  has  been  a  pleasant  day  ;  the  air  shines  like 
transparent  gold  ;  the  wind  sweeps  like  somebody's 
strong  arms  over  the  flowers,  and  gathers  up  a 
crowd  of  perfumes  that  wander  up  and  down  about 
one.  The. church-bells  have  rung  out  like  silver  all 
day.  Those  bells  —  especially  the  Second  Advent 
at  the  farther  end  of  the  village  —  are  positively 
ghastly  when  it  rains. 

Aunt  Winifred  was  dressed  bright  and  early  for 
church.  I,  in  morning  dress  and  slippers,  sighed 
and  demurred. 

"  Auntie,  do  you  expect  to  hear  anything  new  ?  " 

"  Judging  from  your  diagnosis  of  Dr.  Bland,  — 
no." 


64  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

"  To  be  edified,  refreshed,  strengthened,  or  in- 
structed ? " 

"  Perhaps  not." 

"  Bored,  then  ?  " 

"  Not  exactly." 

"  What  do  you  expect  ? " 

"  There  are  the  prayers  and  singing.  Generally 
one  can,  if  one  tries,  wring  a  little  devotion  from 
the  worst  of  them.  As  to  a  minister,  if  he  is  good 
and  commonplace,  young  and  earnest  and  ignorant, 
and  I,  whom  he  cannot  help  one  step  on  the  way 
to  Heaven,  consequently  stay  at  home,  Deacon 
Quirk,  whom  he  might  carry  a  mile  or  two,  by  and 
by  stays  at  home  also.  If  there  is  to  be  a  '  building 
fitly  joined  together,'  each  stone  must  do  its  part 
of  the  upholding.  I  feel  better  to  go  half  a  day  al- 
ways. I  never  compel  Faith  to  go,  but  I  never  have 
a  chance,  for  she  teases  not  to  be  left  at  home." 

"  I  think  it  's  splendid  to  go  to  church  most  the 
time,"  put  in  Faith,  who  was  squatted  on  the  carpet, 
counting  sugared  caraway  seeds,  —  "  all  but  the 
sermon.  That  is  n't  splendid.  I  don't  like  the 
gre-at  big  prayers  'n'  things.  I  like  caramary  seeds, 
though  ;  mother  always  gives  'em  to  me  in  meeting 
'cause  I  'm  a  good  girl.  Don't  you  wish/cw  were 


THE     GATES     AJAR.  6$ 

a  good  girl,  Cousin  Mary,  so  's  you  could  have 
some  ?  Besides,  I  've  got  on  my  best  hat  and  my 
button-boots.  Besides,  there  used  to  be  a  real 
funny  little  boy  up  in  meeting  at  home,  and  he 
gave  me  a  little  tin  dorg  once  over  the  top  the  pew. 
Only  mother  made  me  give  it  back.  O,  you  ought 
to  seen  the  man  that  preached  down  at  Uncle  Cal- 
vin's !  I  tell  you  he  was  a  bully  old  minister,  —  he 
banged  the  Bible  like  everything  !  " 

"  There  's  a  devotional  spirit  for  you  !  "  I  said  to 
her  mother. 

"  Well,"  she  answered,  laughing,  "  it  is  better 
than  that  she  should  be  left  to  play  dolls  and  eat 
preserves,  and  be  punished  for  disobedience.  Sun- 
day would  invariably  become  a  guilty  sort  of 
holiday  at  that  rate.  Now,  caraways  or  '  bully  old 
ministers '  notwithstanding,  she  carries  to  bed  with 
her  a  dim  notion  that  this  has  been  holy  time 
and  pleasant  time.  Besides,  the  associations  of  a 
church-going  childhood,  if  I  can  manage  them 
genially,  will  be  a  help  to  her  when  she  is  older. 
Come,  Faith  !  go  and  pull  off  Cousin  Mary's  slip- 
pers, and  bring  down  her  boots,  and  then  she  '11 
have  to  go  to  church.  No,  I  didrit  say  that  you 
might  tickle  her  feet ! " 


66  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

Feeling  the  least  bit  sorry  that  I  had  set  the 
example  of  a  stay-at-home  Christian  before  the 
child,  I  went  directly  up  stairs  to  make  ready, 
and  we  started  after  all  in  good  season. 

Dr.  Bland  was  in  the  pulpit.  I  observed  that 
he  looked  —  as  indeed  did  the  congregation  bodily 
—  with  some  curiosity  into  our  slip,  where  it  has 
been  a  rare  occurrence  of  late  to  find  me,  and 
where  the  light,  falling  through  the  little  stained 
glass  oriel,  touched  Aunt  Winifred's  thoughtful 
smile.  I  wonder  whether  Dr.  Bland  thought  it 
was  wicked  for  people  to  smile  in  church.  No, 
of  course  he  has  too  much  sense.  I  wonder 
what  it  is  about  Dr.  Bland  that  always  suggests 
such  questions. 

It  has  been  very  warm  all  day,  —  that  aggra- 
vating, unseasonable  heat,  which  is  apt  to  come 
in  spasms  in  the  early  part  of  May,  and  which, 
in  thick  spring  alpaca  and  heavy  sack,  one  finds 
intolerable.  The  thermometer  stood  at  75°  on 
the  church-porch  ;  every  window  was  shut,  and 
everybody's  fan  was  fluttering.  Now,  with  this 
sight  before  him,  what  should  our  observant  min- 
ister do,  but  give  out  as  his  first  hymn  :  "  Thine 
earthly  Sabbaths."  "Thine  earthly  Sabbaths" 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  6/ 

would  be  a  beautiful  hymn,  if  it  were  not  for 
those  lines  about  the  weather:  — 

"  No  midnight  shade,  no  clouded  sun, 
But  sacred,  high,  eternal  noon  "  / 

There  was  a  great  hot  sunbeam  striking  directly 
on  my  black  bonnet.  My  fan  was  broken.  I 
gasped  for  air.  The  choir  went  over  and  over  and 
over  the  words,  spinning  them  into  one  of  those 
indescribable  tunes,  in  which  everybody  seems  to 
be  trying  to  get  through  first.  I  don't  know  what 
they  called  them,  —  they  always  remind  me  of  a 
game  of  "Tag." 

I  looked  at  Aunt  Winifred.  She  took  it  more 
coolly  than  I,  but  an  amused  little  smile  played 
over  her  face.  She  told  me,  after  church,  that 
she  had  repeatedly  heard  that  hymn  given  out 
at  noon  of  an  intense  July  day.  Her  husband, 
she  said,  used  to  save  it  for  the  winter,  or  for 
cloudy  afternoons.  "  Using  means  of  grace,"  he 
called  that. 

However,  Dr.  Bland  did  better  the  second  time, 
Aunt  Winifred  joined  in  the  singing,  and  I  en- 
joyed it,  so  I  will  not  blame  the  poor  man.  I 
suppose  he  was  so  far  lifted  above  this  earth, 


68  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

that  he  would  not  have  known  whether  he  was 
preaching  in  Greenland's  icy  mountains,  or  on 
India's  coral  strand. 

When  he  announced  his  text,  "  por  our  con- 
versation is  in  Heaven,"  Aunt  Winifred  and  I 
exchanged  glances  of  content.  We  had  been 
talking  about  heaven  on  the  way  to  church  ;  at 
least,  till  Faith,  not  finding  herself  entertained, 
interrupted  us  by  some  severe  speculations  as  to 
whether  Maltese  kitties  were  mulattoes,  and  "  why 
the  bell-ringer  did  n't  jump  off  the  steeple  some 
night,  and  see  if  he  could  n't  fly  right  up,  the 
way  Elijah  did." 

I  listened  to  Dr.  Bland  as  I  have  not  listened 
for  a  long  time.  The  subject  was  of  all  subjects 
nearest  my  heart.  He  is  a  scholarly  man,  in  his 
way.  He  ought  to  know,  I  thought,  more  about 
it  than  Aunt  Winifred.  Perhaps  he  could  help  me. 

His  sermon,  as  nearly  as  I  can  recall  it,  was 
substantially  this. 

"  The  future  life  presented  a  vast  theme  to  our 
speculation.  Theories 'too  numerous  to  mention' 
had  been  held  concerning  it.  Pagans  had  be- 
lieved in  a  coming  state  of  rewards  and  punish- 
ments. What  natural  theology  had  dimly  fore- 


THE     GATES    AJAR.  69 

shadowed,  Revelation  had  brought  in,  like  a  full- 
orbed  day,  with  healing  on  its  wings."  I  am 
not  positive  about  the  metaphors. 

"As  it  was  fitting  that  we  should  at  times  turn 
our  thoughts  upon  the  threatenings  of  Scripture,  it 
was  eminently  suitable  also  that  we  should  consider 
its  promises. 

"  He  proposed  in  this  discourse  to  consider  the 
promise  of  Heaven,  the  reward  offered  by  Christ  to 
his  good  and  faithful  servants. 

"  In  the  first  place  :  What  is  heaven  ?  " 

I  am  not  quite  clear  in  my  mind  what  it  was, 
though  .1  tried  my  best  to  find  out.  As  nearly  as  I 
can  recollect,  however, — 

"  Heaven  is  an  eternal  state. 

"  Heaven  is  a  state  of  holiness. 

"  Heaven  is  a  state  of  happiness." 

Having  heard  these  observations  before,  I  will 
not  enlarge  as  he  did  upon  them,  but  leave  that 
for  the  "  vivid  imagination  "  of  the  green  book. 

"  In  the  second  place  :  What  will  be  the  employ- 
ments of  heaven  ? 

"  We  shall  study  the  character  of  God. 

"  An  infinite  mind  must  of  necessity  be  eternally 
an  object  of  study  to  a  finite  mind.  The  finite 


7O  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

mind  must  of  necessity  find  in  such  study  supreme 
delight  All  lesser  joys  and  interests  will  pale. 
He  felt  at  moments,  in  reflecting  on  this  theme, 
that  that  good  brother  who,  on  being  asked  if  he 
expected  to  see  the  dead  wife  of  his  youth  in  heaven, 
replied,  '  I  expect  to  be  so  overwhelmed  by  the 
glory  of  the  presence  of  God,  that  it  may  be  thou- 
sands of  years  before  I  shall  think  of  my  wife,'  — 
he  felt  that  perhaps  this  brother  was  near  the 
truth." 

Poor  Mrs.  Bland  looked  exceedingly  uncomfort- 
able. 

"  We  shall  also  glorify  God." 

He  enlarged  upon  this  division,  but  I  have  for- 
gotten exactly  how.  There  was  something  about 
adoration,  and  the  harpers  harping  with  their 
harps,  and  the  sea  of  glass,  and  crying,  Worthy 
the  Lamb  !  and  a  great  deal  more  that  bewildered 
and  disheartened  me  so  that  I  could  scarcely  listen 
to  it.  I  do  not  doubt  that  we  shall  glorify  God 
primarily  and  happily,  but  can  we  not  do  it  in 
some  other  way  than  by  harping  and  praying  ? 

"  We  shall  moreover  love  each  other  with  a 
universal  and  unselfish  love." 

"  That  we  shall  recognize  our  friends  in  heaven, 


THE     GATES    AJAR.  Jl 

he  was  inclined  to  think,  after  mature  deliberation, 
was  probable.  But  there  would  be  no  special 
selfish  affections  there.  In  this  world  we  have 
enmities  and  favoritisms.  In  the  world  of  bliss  our 
hearts  would  glow  with  holy  love  alike  to  all  other 
holy  hearts." 

I  wonder  if  he  really  thought  that  would  make 
"  a  world  of  bliss."  Aunt  Winifred  slipped  her  hand 
into  mine  under  her  cloak.  Ah,  Dr.  Bland,  if  you 
had  known  how  that  little  soft  touch  was  preaching 
against  you ! 

"  In  the  words  of  an  eminent  divine,  who  has 
long  since  entered  into  the  joys  of  which  he 
spoke  :  '  Thus,  whenever  the  mind  roves  through 
the  immense  region  of  heaven,  it  will  find,  among 
all  its  innumerable  millions,  not  an  enemy,  not  a 
stranger,  not  an  indifferent  heart,  not  a  reserved 
bosom.  Disguise  here,  and  even  concealment,  will 
be  unknown.  The  soul  will  have  no  interests  to 
conceal,  no  thoughts  to  disguise.  A  window  will  be 
opened  in  every  breast,  and  show  to  every  eye  the 
rich  and  beautiful  furniture  within  ! ' 

"  Thirdly  :  How  shall  we  fit  for  heaven  ?" 

He  mentioned  several  ways,  among  which,  — - 
"  We  should  subdue  our  earthly  affections  to  God. 


72  THE     GATES    AJAR. 

"  We  must  not  love  the  creature  as  the  Creator. 
My  son,  give  me  thy  heart.  When  he  removes  our 
friends  from  the  scenes  of  time  (with  a  glance  in 
my  direction),  we  should  resign  ourselves  to  his  will, 
remembering  that  the  Lord  gave  and  the  Lord  hath 
taken  away  in  mercy  ;  that  He  is  all  in  all  ;  that 
He  will  never  leave  us  nor  forsake  us ;  that  He  can 
never  change  or  die." 

As  if  that  made  any  difference  with  the  fact,  that 
his  best  treasures  change  or  die  ! 

"  In  conclusion,  — 

"  We  infer  from  our  text  that  our  hearts  should 
not  be  set  upon  earthly  happiness.  (Enlarged.) 

"That  the  subject  of  heaven  should  be  often  in 
our  thoughts  and  on  our  lips."  (Enlarged.) 

Of  course  I  have  not  done  justice  to  the  filling 
up  of  the  sermon  ;  to  the  illustrations,  metaphors, 
proof-texts,  learning,  and  eloquence,  —  for  though 
Dr.  Bland  cannot  seem  to  think  outside  of  the  old 
grooves,  a  little  eloquence  really  flashes  through  the 
tameness  of  his  style  sometimes,  and  when  he  was 
talking  about  the  harpers,  etc.,  some  of  his  words 
were  well  chosen.  "  To  be  drowned  in  light,"  I 
have  somewhere  read,  "  may  be  very  beautiful  ;  it  is 
still  to  be  drowned."  But  I  have  given  the  skeleton 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  73 

of  the  discourse,  and  I  have  given  the  sum  of  the 
impressions  that  it  left  on  me,  an  attentive  hearer. 
It  is  fortunate  that  I  did  not  hear  it  while  I  was 
alone  ;  it  would  have  made  me  desperate.  Going 
hungry,  hopeless,  blinded,  I  came  back  empty,  un- 
comforted,  groping.  I  wanted  something  actual, 
something  pleasant,  about  this  place  into  which 
Roy  has  gone.  He  gave  me  glittering  generalities, 
cold  commonplace,  vagueness,  unreality,  a  God  and 
a  future  at  which  I  sat  and  shivered. 

Dr.  Bland  is  a  good  man.  He  had,  I  know, 
written  that  sermon  with  prayer.  I  only  wish 
that  he  could  be  made  to  see  how  it  glides  over 
and  sails  splendidly  away  from  wants  like  mine. 

But  thanks  be  to  God  who  has  provided  a 
voice  to  answer  me  out  of  the  deeps. 

Auntie  and  I  walked  home  without  any  re- 
marks (we  overheard  Deacon  Quirk  observe  to  a 
neighbor :  "  That 's  what  I  call  a  good  gospel 
sermon,  now!"),  sent  Faith  away  to  Phcebe,  sat 
down  in  the  parlor,  and  looked  at  each  other. 

"  Well  ?  "  said  I. 

"  I  know  it,"  said  she. 

Upon  which  we  both  began  to  laugh. 

"  But  did  he  say  the  dreadful  truth  ?  * 
4 


74  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

"Not  as  I  find  it  in  my  Bible." 

"That  it  is  probable,  only  probable  that  we 
shall  recognize — " 

"  My  child,  do  not  be  troubled  about  that.  It 
is  not  probable,  it  is  sure.  If  I  could  find  no 
proof  for  it,  I  should  none  the  less  believe  it,  as 
long  as  I  believe  in  God.  He  gave  you  Roy, 
and  the  capacity  to  love  him.  He  has  taught 
you  to  sanctify  that  love  through  love  to  Him. 
Would  it  be  like  Him  to  create  such  beautiful 
and  unselfish  loves,  —  most  like  the  love  of  heaven 
of  any  type  we  know,  —  just  for  our  threescore 
years  and  ten  of  earth  ?  Would  it  be  like  Him 
to  suffer  two  souls  to  grow  together  here,  so  that 
the  separation  of  a  day  is  pain,  and  then  wrench 
them  apart  for  all  eternity?  It  would  be  what 
Madame  de  Gasparin  calls,  'fearful  irony  on  the 
part  of  God.' " 

"  But  there  are  lost  loves.  There  are  lost 
souls." 

"How  often  would  I  have  gathered  you,  and 
ye  would  not !  That  is  not  his  work.  He  would 
have  saved  both  soul  and  love.  They  had  their 
own  way.  We  were  speaking  of  His  redeemed. 
The  object  of  having  this  world  at  all,  you 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  75 

know,  is  to  fit  us  for  another.  Of  what  use  will 
it  have  been,  if  on  passing  out  of  it  we  must 
throw  by  forever  its  gifts,  its  lessons,  its  mem- 
ories? God  links  things  together  better  than 
that.  Be  sure,  as  you  are  sure  of  Him,  that  we 
shall  be  ourselves  in  heaven.  Would  you  be 
yourself  not  to  recognize  Roy  ?  —  consequently 
not  to  love  Roy,  for  to  love  and  to  be  separated 
is  misery,  and  heaven  is  joy." 

"I  understand.  But  you  said  you  had  other 
proof." 

"  So  I  have  ;  plenty  of  it.  If  l  many  shall  come 
from  the  East  and  from  the  West,  and  shall  sit 
down  in  the  kingdom  of  God  with  Abraham, 
Isaac,  and  Jacob,'  will  they  not  be  likely  to  know 
that  they  are  with  Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Jacob  ? 
or  will  they  think  it  is  Shadrach,  Meshach,  and 
Abednego  ? 

"  What  is  meant  by  such  expressions  as  '  risen 
together!  '  sitting  together  at  the  right  hand  of 
God/  '  sitting  together  in  heavenly  places '  ?  If 
they  mean  anything,  they  mean  recognitions, 
friendships,  enjoyments. 

"  Did  not  Peter  and  the  others  know  Moses 
when  they  saw  him  ?  —  know  Elias  when  they 


76  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

saw  him  ?  Yet  these  men  were  dead  hundreds 
of  years  before  the  favored  fishermen  were  born. 

"  How  was  it  with  those  '  saints  which  slept 
and  arose '  when  Christ  hung  dead  there  in  the 
dark  ?  Were  they  not  seen  of  many  ? " 

"  But  that  was  a  miracle." 

"They  were  risen  dead,  such  as  you  and  I 
shall  be  some  day.  The  miracle  consisted  in 
their  rising  then  and  there.  Moreover,  did  not 
the  beggar  recognize  Abraham  ?  and  —  Well,  one 
might  go  through  the  Bible  finding  it  full  of  this 
promise  in  hints  or  assertions,  in  parables  or  vis- 
ions. We  are  'heirs  of  God,'  'joint  heirs  with 
Christ '  ;  having  suffered  with  Him,  we  shall  be 
'glorified  together'.  Christ  himself  has  said  many 
sure  things :  '  I  will  come  and  receive  you,  that 
where  I  am,  there  ye  may  be.'  '  I  will  that  they 
be  with  me  where  I  am.'  Using,  too,  the  very 
type  of  Godhead  to  signify  the  eternal  nearness 
and  eternal  love  of  just  such  as  you  and  Roy,  as 
John  and  me,  he  prays  :  '  Holy  Father,  keep 
them  whom  Thou  hast  given  me,  that  they  may 
be  one  as  we  are? 

"  There  is  one  place,  though,  where  I  find 
what  I  like  better  than  all  the  rest ;  you  remem- 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  77 

her  that  old  cry  wrung  from  trie  lips  of  the 
stricken  king,  — '  I  shall  go  to  him ;  but  he  will 
not  return  to  me.'" 

"  I  never  thought  before  how  simple  and  direct 
it  is,  and  that,  too,  in  those  old  blinded  days." 

"  The  more  I  study  the  Bible,"  she  said,  "  and 
I  study  not  entirely  in  ignorance  of  the  com- 
mentators and  the  mysteries,  the  more  perplexed 
I"  am  to  imagine  where  the  current  ideas  of  our 
future  come  from.  They  certainly  are  not  in 
this  book  of  gracious  promises.  That  heaven 
which  we  heard  about  to-day  was  Dr.  Eland's, 
not  God's.  'It's  aye  a  wonderfu'  thing  to  me,' 
as  poor  Lauderdale  said,  '  the  way  some  preach- 
ers take  it  upon  themselves  to  explain  matters  to 
the  Almighty  ! '  " 

"  But  the  harps  and  choirs,  the  throne,  the 
white  robes,  are  all  in  Revelation.  Deacon  Quirk 
would  put  his  great  brown  finger  on  the  verses, 
and  hold  you  there  triumphantly." 

"  Can't  people  tell  picture  from  substance,  a 
metaphor  from  its  meaning?  That  book  of  Rev- 
elation is  precisely  what  it  professes  to  be,  — 
a  vision,  a  symbol.  A  symbol  of  something,  to 
be  sure,  and  rich  with  pleasant  hopes,  but  still  a 


78  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

symbol.  Now,  I  really  believe  that  a  large  pro- 
portion of  Christian  church-members,  who  have 
studied  their  Bible,  attended  Sabbath  schools,  lis- 
tened to  sermons  all  their  lives,  if  you  could 
fairly  come  at  their  most  definite  idea  of  the 
place  where  they  expect  to  spend  eternity,  would 
own  it  to  be  the  golden  city,  with  pearl  gates, 
and  jewels  in  the  wall.  It  never  occurs  to  them, 
that,  if  one  picture  is  literal,  another  must  be. 
If  we  are  to  walk  golden  streets,  how  can  we 
stand  on  a  sea  of  glass  ?  How  can  we  '  sit  on 
thrones '  ?  How  can  untold  millions  of  us  '  lie  in 
Abraham's  bosom '  ? 

"  But  why  have  given  us  empty  symbols  ?  Why 
not  a  little  fact  ?  " 

"They  are  not  empty  symbols.  And  why  God 
did  not  give  us  actual  descriptions  of  actual 
heavenly  life,  I  don't  trouble  myself  to  wonder. 
He  certainly  had  his  reasons,  and  that  is  enough 
for  me.  I  find  from  these  symbols,  and  from  his 
voice  in  my  own  heart,  many  beautiful  things, — 
I  will  tell  you  some  more  of  them  at  another 
time,  — and,  for  the  rest,  I  am  content  to  wait. 
He  loves  me,  and  he  loves  mine.  As  long  as  we 
love  Him,  He  will  never  separate  Himself  from 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  79 

us,  or  us  from  each  other.  That,  at  least,  is 
sure" 

"If  that  is  sure,  the  rest  is  of  less  importance; 
—  yes.  But  Dr.  Bland  said  an  awful  thing!" 

"The  quotation  from  a  dead  divine?" 

"Yes.  That  there  will  be  no  separate  inter- 
ests, no  thoughts  to  conceal." 

"  Poor  good  man !  He  has  found  out  by  this 
time  that  he  should  not  have  laid  down  non- 
sense like  that,  without  qualification  or  demur, 
before  a  Bible-reading  hearer.  It  was  simply  his 
opinion,  not  David's,  or  Paul's,  or  John's,  or 
Isaiah's.  He  had  a  perfect  right  to  put  it  in  the 
form  of  a  conjecture.  Nobody  would  forbid  his 
conjecturing  that  the  inhabitants  of  heaven  are 
all  deaf  and  dumb,  or  wear  green  glasses,  or  shave 
their  heads,  if  he  chose,  provided  he  stated  that 
it  was  conjecture,  not  revelation." 

"  But  where  does  the  Bible  say  that  we  shall 
have  power  to  conceal  our  thoughts  ?  —  and  I 
would  rather  be  annihilated  than  to  spend  eter- 
nity with  heart  laid  bare,  —  the  inner  temple 
thrown  open  to  be  trampled  on  by  every  passing 
stranger  ! " 

"  The  Bible  specifies  very  little  about  the  minor 


8O  THE    GATES    AJAR 

arrangements  of  eternity  in  any  way.  But  I  doubt 
if,  under  any  circumstances,  it  would  have  occurred 
to  inspired  men  to  inform  us  that  our  thoughts 
shall  continue  to  be  our  own.  The  fact  is  patent 
on  the  face  of  things.  The  dead  minister's  sup- 
position would  destroy  individuality  at  one  fell 
swoop.  We  should  be  like  a  man  walking  down 
a  room  lined  with  mirrors,  who  sees  himself  re- 
flected in  all  sizes,  colors,  shades,  at  all  angles 
and  in  all  proportions,  according  to  the  capacity 
of  the  mirror,  till  he  seems  no  longer  to  belong 
to  himself,  but  to  be  cut  up  into  ellipses  and 
octagons  and  prisms.  How  soon  would  he  grow 
frantic  in  such  companionship,  and  beg  for  a 
corner  where  he^  might  hide  and  hush  himself  in 
the  dark  ? 

"That  we  shall  in  a  higher  life  be  able  to  do 
what  we  cannot  in  this,  —  judge  fairly  of  each 
other's  moral  worth,  —  is  undoubtedly  true.  What- 
ever the  Judgment  Day  may  mean,  that  is  the 
substance  of  it.  But  this-  promiscuous  theory  of 
refraction  ;  —  never  ! 

"  Besides,  wherever  the  Bible  touches  the  sub- 
ject, it  premises  our  individuality  as  a  matter 
of  course.  What  would  be  the  use  of  talking, 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  8l 

if  everybody  knew  the  thoughts  of  everybody 
else  ? " 

"  You  don't  suppose  that  people  talk  in  heaven  ? " 

"  I  don't  suppose  anything  else.  Are  we  to  spend 
ages  of  joy,  a  company  of  mutes  together  ?  Why 
not  talk  ? " 

"  I  supposed  we  should  sing,  —  but  —  " 

"  Why  not  talk  as  well  as  sing  ?  Does  not  song 
involve  the  faculty  of  speech  ?  —  unless  you  would 
like  to  make  canaries  of  us." 

"  Ye-es.     Why,  yes." 

"  There  are  the  visitors  at  the  beautiful  Mount  of 
Transfiguration  again.  Did  not  they  talk  with  each 
other  and  with  Christ  ?  Did  not  John  talk  with 
the  angel  who  '  shewed  him  those  things  '  ?  " 

"  And  you  mean  to  say  —  " 

"  I  mean  to  say  that  if  there  is  such  a  thing  as 
common  sense,  you  will  talk  with  Roy  as  you  talked 
with  him  here,  —  only  not  as  you  talked  with  him 
here,  because  there  will  be  no  troubles  nor  sins,  no 
anxieties  nor  cares,  to  talk  about  ;  no  ugly  shades 
of  cross  words  or  little  quarrels  to  be  made  up  ; 
no  fearful  looking-for  of  separation." 

I  laid  my  head  upon  her  shoulder,  and  could 
hardly  speak  for  the  comfort  that  she  gave  me. 


82  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

"  Yes,  I  believe  we  shall  talk  and  laugh  and  joke 
and  play  —  " 

"  Laugh  and  joke  in  heaven  !  " 

"  Why  not  ?  " 

"  But  it  seems  so  —  so  —  why,  so  wicked  and 
irreverent  and  all  that,  you  know." 

Just  then  Faith,  who,  mounted  out  on  the  kitchen 
table,  was  preaching  at  Phoebe  in  comical  mimicry 
of  Dr.  Eland's  choicest  intonations,  laughed  out  like 
the  splash  of  a  little  wave. 

The  sound  came  in  at  the  open  door,  and  we 
stopped  to  listen  till  it  had  rippled  away. 

"  There  ! "  said  her  mother,  "  put  that  child,  this 
very  minute,  with  all  her  little  sins  forgiven,  into 
one  of  our  dear  Lord's  many  mansions,  and  do  you 
suppose  that  she  would  be  any  the  less  holy  or  less 
reverent  for  a  laugh  like  that  ?  Is  he  going  to  check 
all  the  sparkle  and  blossom  of  life  when  he  takes  us 
to  himself?  I  don't  believe  any  such  thing. 

"  There  were  both  sense  and  Christianity  in 
what  somebody  wrote  on  the  death  of  a  humor- 
ous poet :  — 

'  Does  nobody  laugh  there,  where  he  has  gone,  — 
This  man  of  the  smile  and  the  jest  ? ' 

—  provided   there   was   any   hope   that   the  poor 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  83 

fellow  had  gone  to  heaven ;  if  not,  it  was  bad 
philosophy  and  worse  religion. 

"  Did  not  David  dance  before  the  Lord  with  all 
his  might  ?  A  Bible  which  is  full  of  happy  battle- 
cries  :  '  Rejoice  in  the  Lord  !  make  a  joyful  noise 
unto  him  !  Give  thanks  unto  the  Locd,  for  his 
mercy  endureth ! '  —  a  Bible  which  exhausts  its 
splendid  wealth  of  rhetoric  to  make  us  understand 
that  the  coming  life  is  a  life  of  joy,  no  more 
threatens  to  make  nuns  than  mutes  of  us.  I  ex- 
pect that  you  will  hear  some  of  Roy's  very  old 
jokes,  see  the  sparkle  in  his  eye,  listen  to  his 
laughing  voice,  lighten  up  the  happy  days  as  glee- 
fully as  you  may  choose;  and  that — " 

Faith  appeared  upon  the  scene  just  then,  with 
the  interesting  information  that  she  had  bitten  her 
tongue ;  so  we  talked  no  more. 

How  pleasant,  —  how  pleasant  this  is  !  I  never 
supposed  before  that  God  would  let  any  one  laugh 
in  heaven. 

I  wonder  if  Roy  has  seen  the  President.  Aunt 
Winifred  says  she  does  not  doubt  it.  She  thinks 
that  all  the  soldiers  must  have  crowded  up  to 
meet  him,  and  "  O,"  she  says,  "  what  a  sight  to 
see ! " 


84  THE    GATES    AJAR. 


VII. 

May  12. 

A  UNT  WINIFRED  has  said  something  about 
**  going,  but  I  cannot  yet  bear  to  hear  of 
such  a  thing.  She  is  to  stay  awhile  longer. 

i6th. 

We  have  been  over  to-night  to  the  grave. 

She  proposed  to  go  by  herself,  thinking,  I  saw, 
with  the  delicacy  with  which  she  always  thinks, 
that  I  would  rather  not  be  there  with  another. 
Nor  should  I,  nor  could  I,  with  any  other  than 
this  woman.  It  is  strange.  I  wished  to  go  there 
with  her.  I  had  a  vague,  unreasoning  feeling  that 
she  would  take  away  some  of  the  bitterness  of 
it,  as  she  has  taken  the  bitterness  of  much  else. 

It  is  looking  very  pleasant  there  now.  The 
turf  has  grown  fine  and  smooth.  The  low  arbor- 
vitae  hedge  and  knots  of  Norway  spruce,  that  father 
planted  long  ago  for  mother,  drop  cool,  green 
shadows  that  stir  with  the  wind.  My  English  ivy 
has  crept  about  and  about  the  cross.  Roy  used  to 
say  that  he  should  fancy  a  cross  to  mark  the  spot 


THE     GATES     AJAR.  85 

where  he  might  lie  ;  I  think  he  would  like  this 
pure,  unveined  marble.  May-flowers  cover  the 
grave  now,  and  steal  out  among  the  clover-leaves 
with  a  flush  like  sunrise.  By  and  by  there  will 
be  roses,  and  in  August,  August's  own  white 
lilies. 

We  went  silently  over,  and  sat  silently  down  on 
the  grass,  the  field-path  stretching  away  to  the 
little  church  behind  us,  and  beyond,  in  front,  the 
slope,  the  flats,  the  river,  the  hills  cut  in  purple 
distance  melting  far  into  the  east.  The  air  was 
thick  with  perfume.  Golden  bees  hung  giddily 
over  the  blush  in  the  grass.  In  the  low  branches 
that  swept  the  grave  a  little  bird  had  built  her 
nest. 

Aunt  Winifred  did  not  speak  to  me  for  a  time, 
nor  watch  my  face.  Presently  she  laid  her  hand 
upon  my  lap,  and  I  put  mine  into  it. 

"  It  is  very  pleasant  here,"  she  said  then,  in  her 
very  pleasant  voice. 

"  I  meant  that  it  should  be,"  I  answered,  trying 
not  to  let  her  see  my  lips  quiver.  "  At  least  it 
must  not  look  neglected.  I  don't  suppose  it  makes 
any  difference  to  him" 

"  I  do  not  feel  sure  of  that." 


86  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

"  What  do  you  mean  ?  " 

"  I  do  not  feel  sure  that  anything  he  has  left 
makes  no  '  difference '  to  him." 

"  But  I  don't  understand.  He  is  in  heaven.  He 
would  be  too  happy  to  care  for  anything  that  is 
going  on  in  this  woful  world." 

"  Perhaps  that  is  so,"  she  said,  smiling  a  sweet 
contradiction  to  her  words,  "  but  I  don't  believe  it" 

"What  do  you  believe?" 

"  Many  things  that  I  have  to  say  to  you,  but  you 
cannot  bear  them  now." 

"  I  have  sometimes  wondered,  for  I  cannot  help 
it,"  I  said,  "  whether  he  is  shut  off  from  all  knowl- 
edge of  me  for  all  these  years  till  I  can  go  to  him. 
It  will  be  a  great  while.  It  seems  hard.  Roy 
would  want  to  know  something,  if  it  were  only  a 
little,  about  me." 

"  I  believe  that  he  wants  to  know,  and  that  he 
knows,  Mary  ;  though,  since  the  belief  must  rest 
on  analogy  and  conjecture,  you  need  not  accept  it 
as  demonstrated  mathematics,"  she  answered,  with 
another  smile. 

"  Roy  never  forgot  me  here  !  "  I  said,  not  mean- 
ing to  sob. 

"  That   is  just   it.     He  was   not   constituted  so 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  8/ 

that  he,  remaining  himself,  Roy,  could  forget  you. 
If  he  goes  out  into  this  other  life  forgetting,  he 
becomes  another  than  himself.  That  is  a  far  more 
unnatural  way  of  creeping  out  of  the  difficulty 
than  to  assume  that  he  loves  and  remembers. 
Why  not  assume  that  ?  In  fact,  why  assume  any- 
thing else  ?  Neither  reason,  nor  the  Bible,  nor 
common  sense,  forbids  it.  Instead  of  starting  with 
it  as  an  hypothesis  to  be  proved  if  we  can,  I  lay 
it  down  as  one  of  those  probabilities  for  which 
Butler  would  say,  '  the  presumption  amounts  nearly 
to  certainty '  ;  and  if  any  one  can  disprove  it,  I 
will  hear  what  he  has  to  say.  There  ! "  she  broke 
off,  laughing  softly,  "  that  is  a  sufficient  dose  of 
metaphysics  for  such  a  simple  thing.  It  seems  to 
me  to  lie  just  here:  Roy  loved  you.  Our  Father, 
for  some  tender,  hidden  reason,  took  him  out  of 
your  sight  for  a  while.  Though  changed  much,  he 
can  have  forgotten  nothing.  Being  only  out  of 
sight,  you  remember,  not  lost,  nor  asleep,  nor  anni- 
hilated, he  goes  on  loving.  To  love  must  mean  to 
think  of,  to  care  for,  to  hope  for,  to  pray  for,  not 
less  out  of  a  body  than  in  it." 

"But  that  must  mean  —  why,  that  must  mean — " 
"  That  he  is  near  you.     I  do  not  doubt  it." 


88  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

The  sunshine  quivered  in  among  the  ivy-leaves, 
and  I  turned  to  watch  it,  thinking. 

"  I  do  not  doubt,"  she  went  on,  speaking  low,  — 
"  I  cannot  doubt  that  our  absent  dead  are  very 
present  with  us.  He  said,  '  I  am  with  you  alway,' 
knowing  the  need  we  have  of  him  even  to  the  end 
of  the  world.  He  must  understand  the  need  we 
have  of  them.  I  cannot  doubt  it." 

I  watched  her  as  she  sat  with  her  absent  eyes 
turned  eastward,  and  her  peculiar  look  —  I  have 
never  seen  it  on  another  face  —  as  of  one  who 
holds  a  happy  secret ;  and  while  I  watched  I  won- 
dered. 

"  There  is  a  reason  for  it,"  she  said,  rousing  as  if 
from  a  pleasant  dream,  —  "a  good  sensible  reason, 
too,  it  strikes  me,  independent  of  Scriptural  or 
other  proof." 

"What  is  that?" 

"That  God  keeps  us  briskly  at  work  in  this 
world." 

I  did  not  understand. 

"  Altogether  too  briskly,  considering  that  it  is 
a  preparative  world,  to  intend  to  put  us  from  it 
into  an  idle  one.  What  more  natural  than  that 
we  shall  spend  our  best  energies  as  we  spent  them 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  89 

here,  —  in  comforting,  teaching,  helping,  saving 
people  whose  very  souls  we  love  better  than  our 
own  ?  In  fact,  it  would  be  very  ««natural  if  we 
did  not." 

"  But  I  thought  that  God  took  care  of  us,  and 
angels,  like  Gabriel  and  the  rest,  if  I  ever  thought 
anything  about  it,  which  I  am  inclined  to  doubt." 

" '  God  works  by  the  use  of  means,'  as  the 
preachers  say.  Why  not  use  Roy  as  well  as  Ga- 
briel ?  What  archangel  could  understand  and 
reach  the  peculiarities  of  your  nature  as  he  could  ? 
or,  even  if  understanding,  could  so  love  and  bear 
with  you  ?  What  is  to  be  done  ?  Will  they  send 
Roy  to  the  planet  Jupiter  to  take  care  of  some- 
body's else  sister?"  I  laughed  in  spite  of  myself; 
nor  did  the  laugh  seem  to  jar  upon  the  sacred  still- 
ness of  the  place.  Her  words  were  drawing  away 
the  bitterness,  as  the  sun  was  blotting  the  dull,  dead 
greens  of  the  ivy  into  its  glow  of  golden  color. 

"  But  the  Bible,  Aunt  Winifred." 

"The  Bible  does  not  say  a  great  deal  on  this 
point,"  she  said,  "but  it  does  not  contradict  me. 
In  fact,  it  helps  me  ;  and,  moreover,  it  would  up- 
hold me  in  black  and  white  if  it  were  n't  for  one 
little  obstacle." 


90  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

"And  that?" 

"  That  frowning  '  original  Greek/  which  Gail 
Hamilton  denounces  with  her  righteous  indigna- 
tion. No  sooner  do  I  find  a  pretty  verse  that  is 
exactly  what  I  want,  than  up  hops  a  commentator, 
and  says,  this  is  n't  according  to  text,  and  means 
something  entirely  different ;  and  Barnes  says  this, 
and  Stuart  believes  that,  and  Olshausen  has  demon- 
strated the  other,  and  very  ignorant  it  is  in  you, 
too,  not  to  know  it !  Here  the  other  day  I  fer- 
reted out  a  sentence  in  Revelation  that  seemed  to 
prove  beyond  question  that  angels  and  redeemed 
men  were  the  same  ;  where  the  angel  says  to  John, 
you  know,  '  Am  I  not  of  thy  brethren  the  proph- 
ets ?'  I  thought  that  I  had  discovered  a  delight- 
ful thing  which  all  the  Fathers  of  the  church  had 
overlooked,  and  went  in  great  glee  to  your  Uncle 
Calvin,  to  be  told  that  something  was  the  matter, 
—  a  noun  left  out,  or  some  other  unanswerable  and 
unreasonable  horror,  I  don't  know  what ;  and  that 
it  did  n't  mean  that  he  was  of  thy  brethren  the 
prophets  at  all ! 

"  You  see,  if  it  could  be  proved  that  the  Chris- 
tian dead  become  angels,  we  could  have  all  that  we 
need,  direct  from  God,  about  —  to  use  the  beau- 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  91 

tiful  old  phrase  —  the  communion  of  saints.  From 
Genesis  to  Revelation  the  Bible  is  filled  with  an- 
gels who  are  at  work  on  earth.  They  hold  sweet 
converse  with  Abraham  in  his  tent.  They  are 
intrusted  to  save  the  soul  of  Lot.  An  angel  hears 
the  wail  of  Hagar.  The  beautiful  feet  of  an  angel 
bring  the  good  tidings  to  maiden  Mary.  An  an- 
gel's noiseless  step  guides  Peter  through  the  barred 
and  bolted  gate.  Angels  rolled  the  stone  from  the 
buried  Christ,  and  angels  sat  there  in  the  solemn 
morning,  —  O  Mary  !  if  we  could  have  seen  them  ! 

"  Then  there  is  that  one  question,  direct,  com- 
prehensive, —  we  should  not  need  anything  else,  — 
'Are  they  not  all  ministering  spirits,  sent  forth  to 
minister  to  the  heirs  of  salvation  ? ' 

"  But  you  see  it  never  seems  to  have  entered 
those  commentators'  heads  that  all  these  beautiful 
things  refer  to  any  but  a  superior  race  of  beings, 
like  those  from  whose  ranks  Lucifer  fell." 

"  How  stupid  in  them  !  " 

"  I  take  comfort  in  thinking  so ;  but,  to  be 
serious,  even  admitting  that  these  passages  refer 
to  a  superior  race,  must  there  not  be  some  simi- 
larity in  the  laws  which  govern  existence  in  the 
heavenly  world  ?  Since  these  gracious  deeds  are 


92  THF    GATES    AJAR. 

performed  by  what  we  are  accustomed  to  call  '  spir- 
itual beings,'  why  may  they  not  as  well  be  done  by 
people  from  this  world  as  from  anywhere  else  ? 
Besides,  there  is  another  point,  and  a  reasonable 
one,  to  be  made.  The  word  angel  in  the  original  * 
means,  strictly,  a  messenger.  It  applies  to  any  ser- 
vant of  God,  animate  or  inanimate.  An  east  wind 
is  as  much  an  angel  as  Michael.  Again,  the  gen- 
eric terms,  '  spirits/  '  gods,'  '  sons  of  God,'  are  used 
interchangeably  for  saints  and  for  angels.  So,  you 
see,  I  fancy  that  I  find  a  way  for  you  and  Roy  and 
me  and  all  of  us,  straight  into  the  shining  ministry. 
Mary,  Mary,  would  n't  you  like  to  go  this  very 
afternoon  ? " 

She  lay  back  in  the  grass,  with  her  face  up- 
turned to  the  sky,  and  drew  a  long  breath,  wearily. 
I  do  not  think  she  meant  me  to  hear  it.  I  did  not 
answer  her,  for  it  came  over  me  with  such  a  hope- 
less thrill,  how  good  it  would  be  to  be  taken  to 
Roy,  there  by  his  beautiful  grave,  with  the  ivy  and 
the  May-flowers  and  the  sunlight  and  the  clover- 
leaves  round  about  ;  and  that  it  could  not  be,  and 
how  long  it  was  to  wait,  —  it  came  over  me  so  >-hat 
I  could  not  speak. 

*  ayyeXor. 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  93 

"  There  ! "  she  said,  suddenly  rousing,  "  what  a 
thoughtless,  wicked  thing  it  was  to  say !  And  I 
meant  to  give  you  only  the  good  cheer  of  a  cheery 
friend.  No,  I  do  not  care  to  go  this  afternoon,  nor 
any  afternoon,  till  my  Father  is  ready  for  me. 
Wherever  he  has  most  for  me  to  do,  there  I  wish, 
—  yes,  I  think  I  wish  to  stay.  He  knows  best." 

After  a  pause,  I  asked  again,  "  Why  did  He  not 
tell  us  more  about  this  thing,  —  about  their  pres- 
ence with  us  ?  You  see  if  I  could  know  it !  " 

"  The  mystery  of  the  Bible  lies  not  so  much  in 
what  it  says,  as  in  what  it  does  not  say,"  she  re- 
plied. "  But  I  suppose  that  we  have  been  told  all 
that  we  can  comprehend  in  this  world.  Knowl- 
edge on  one  point  might  involve  knowledge  on 
another,  like  the  links  of  a  chain,  till  it  stretched 
far  beyond  our  capacity.  At  any  rate,  it  is  not  for 
me  to  break  the  silence.  That  is  God's  affair.  I 
can  only  accept  the  fact.  Nevertheless,  as  Dr. 
Chalmers  says :  '  It  were  well  for  us  all  could  we 
carefully  draw  the  line  between  the  secret  things 
which  belong  to  God  and  the  things  which  are 
revealed  and  belong  to  us  and  to  our  children.' 
Some  one  else,  —  Whately,  I  think,  —  I  remember 
to  have  noticed  as  speaking  about  these  very  sub- 


94  THE     GATES    AJAR. 

jects  to  this  effect,  —  that  precisely  because  we 
know  so  little  of  them,  it  is  the  more  important 
that  we  '  should  endeavor  so  to  dwell  on  them  as  to 
make  the  most  of  what  little  knowledge  we  have.' " 
"  Aunt  Winifred,  you  are  such  a  comfort ! " 
"  It  needs  our  best  faith,"  she  said,  "  to  bear  this 
reticence  of  God.  I  cannot  help  thinking  some- 
times of  a  thing  Lauderdale  said,  —  I  am  always 
quoting  him,  —  from  '  Son  of  the  Soil,'  you  remem- 
ber :  '  It 's  an  awfu'  marvel,  beyond  my  reach,  when 
a  word  of  communication  would  make  a'  the  differ- 
ence, why  it 's  no  permitted,  if  it  were  but  to  keep 
a  heart  from  breaking  now  and  then.'  Think  of 
poor  Eugenie  de  Guerin,  trying  to  continue  her 
little  journal  'To  Maurice  in  Heaven,'  till  the 
awful,  answerless  stillness  shut  up  the  book  and 
laid  aside  the  pen. 

"  But  then,"  she  continued,  "  there  is  this  to  re- 
member, —  I  may  have  borrowed  the  idea,  or  it 
may  be  my  own,  —  that  if  we  could  speak  to  them, 
or  they  to  us,  there  would  be  no  death,  for  there 
would  be  no  separation.  The  last,  the  surest,  in 
some  cases  the  only  test  of  loyalty  to  God,  would 
thus  be  taken  away.  Roman  Catholic  nature  is 
human  nature,  when  it  comes  upon  its  knees  before 


THE     GATES    AJAR.  95 

a  saint.     Many  lives  —  all  such  lives  as  yours  and 
mine  — would  become  — " 

"  Would  become  what  ?  " 

"  One  long  defiance  to  the  First  Commandment." 

I  cannot  become  used  to  such  words  from  such 
quiet  lips.  Yet  they  give  me  a  curious  sense  of 
the  trustworthiness  of  her  peace.  "  Founded  upon 
a  rock,"  it  seems  to  be.  She  has  done  what  it 
takes  a  lifetime  for  some  of  us  to  do  ;  what  some 
of  us  go  into  eternity,  leaving  undone  ;  what  I  am 
afraid  I  shall  never  do,  —  sounded  her  own  nature. 
She  knows  the  worst  of  herself,  and  faces  it  as 
fairly,  I  believe,  as  anybody  can  do  in  this  world. 
As  for  the  best  of  herself,  she  trusts  that  to  Christ, 
and  he  knows  it,  and  we.  I  hope  she,  in  her  sweet 
humbleness,  will  know  it  some  day. 

"I  suppose,  nevertheless,"  she  said,  "that  Roy 
knows  what  you  are  doing  and  feeling  as  well  as, 
perhaps  better  than,  he  knew  it  three  months  ago. 
So  he  can  help  you  without  harming  you." 

I  asked  her,  turning  suddenly,  how  that  could 
be,  and  yet  heaven  be  heaven,  —  how  he  could  see 
me  suffer  what  I  had  suffered,  could  see  me  some- 
times when  I  supposed  none  but  God  had  seen  me, 
—  and  sing  on  and  be  happy. 


96  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

"  You  are  not  the  first,  Mary,  and  you  will  not 
be  the  last,  to  ask  that  question.  I  cannot  answer 
it,  and  I  never  heard  of  any  who  could.  I  feel 
sure  only  of  this,  —  that  he  would  suffer  far  less  to 
see  you  than  to  know  nothing  about  you  ;  and  that 
God's  power  of  inventing  happiness  is  not  to  be 
blocked  by  an  obstacle  like  this.  Perhaps  Roy 
sees  the  end  from  the  beginning,  and  can  bear  the 
sight  of  pain  for  the  peace  that  he  watches  coming 
to  meet  you.  I  do  not  know,  —  that  does  not  per- 
plex me  now  ;  it  only  makes  me  anxious  for  one 
thing." 

"What  is  that?" 

"  That  you  and  I  shall  not  do  anything  to  make 
them  sorry." 

"  To  make  them  sorry  ?  " 

"  Roy  would  care.  Roy  would  be  disappointed 
to  see  you  make  life  a  hopeless  thing  for  his  sake, 
or  to  see  you  doubt  his  Saviour." 

"  Do  you  think  that  ?  " 

"  Some  sort  of  mourning  over  sin  enters  that 
happy  life.  God  himself  '  was  grieved '  forty  years 
long  over  his  wandering  people.  Among  the  an- 
gels there  has  been  '  silence,'  whatever  that  myste- 
rious pause  may  mean,  just  as  there  is  joy  over  one 


THE    GATES.AJAR.  97 

sinner  that  repenteth  ;  another  of  my  proof-texts 
that,  to  show  that  they  are  allowed  to  keep  us  in 
sight." 

"Then  you  think,  you  really  think,  that  Roy 
remembers  and  loves  and  takes  care  of  me  ;  that 
he  has  been  listening,  perhaps,  and  is  —  why,  you 
don't  think  he  may  be  here  ?  " 

"  Yes,  I  do.  Here,  close  beside  you  all  this  time, 
trying  to  speak  to  you  through  the  blessed  sun- 
shine and  the  flowers,  trying  to  help  you  and  sure 
to  love  you,  —  right  here,  dear.  I  do  not  believe 
God  means  to  send  him  away  from  you,  either." 

My  heart  was  too  full  to  answer  her.  Seeing 
how  it  was,  she  slipped  away,  and,  strolling  out  of 
sight  with  her  face  to  the  eastern  hills,  left  me 
alone. 

And  yet  I  did  not  seem  alone.  The  low 
branches  swept  with  a  little  soft  sigh  across  the 
grave  ;  the  May-flowers  wrapped  me  in  with  fra- 
grance thick  as  incense  ;  the  tiny  sparrow  turned 
her  soft  eyes  at  me  over  the  edge  of  the  nest, 
and  chirped  contentedly;  the  "blessed  sunshine" 
talked  with  me  as  it  touched  the  edges  of  the 
ivy-leaves  to  fire. 

I  cannot  write  it  even  here,  how  these  things 
5  G 


98  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

stole  into  my  heart  and  hushed  me.  If  I  ha<\ 
seen  him  standing  by  the  'stainless  cross,  it  would 
not  have  frightened  or  surprised  me.  There  — 
not  dead  or  gone,  but  there  —  it  helps  me  and 
makes  me  strong ! 

"  Mamie  !  little  Mamie  ! " 

O  Roy,  I  will  tiy  to  bear  it  all  if  you  will  only 
stay ! 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  99 


VIII. 

May  20. 

nearer  the  time  has  come  for  Aunt  Wini- 
-*-  fred  to  go,  the  more  it  has  seemed  impossi- 
ble to  part  with  her.  I  have  run  away  from  the 
thought  like  a  craven,  till  she  made  me  face  it  this 
morning,  by  saying  decidedly  that  she  should  go 
on  the  first  of  the  week. 

I  dropped  my  sewing  ;  the  work-basket  tipped 
over,  and  all  my  spools  rolled  away  under  the 
chairs.  I  had  a  little  time  to  think  while  I  was 
picking  them  up. 

"There  is  the  rest  of  my  visit  at  Norwich  to 
be  made,  you  know,"  she  said,  "  and  while  I  am 
there  I  shall  form  some  definite  plans  for  the 
summer ;  I  have  hardly  decided  what,  yet.  I  had 
better  leave  here  by  the  seven  o'clock  train,  if 
such  an  early  start  will  not  incommode  you." 

I  wound  up  the  last  spool,  and  turned  away  to 
the  window.  There  was  a  confused,  dreary  sky  of 
scurrying  clouds,  and  a  cold  wind  was  bruising  the 
apple-buds.  I  hate  a  cold  wind  in  May.  It  made 


IOO  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

me  choke  a  little,  thinking  how  I  should  sit  and 
listen  to  it  after  she  was  gone,  —  of  the  old,  blank, 
comfortless  days  that  must  come  and  go, — of  what 
she  had  brought,  and  what  she  would  take  away. 
I  was  a  bit  faint,  I  think,  for  a  minute.  I  had  not 
really  thought  the  prospect  through,  before. 

"  Mary,"  she  said,  "  what 's  the  matter.  Come 
here." 

I  went  over,  and  she  drew  me  into  her  lap,  and 
I  put  my  arms  about  her  neck. 

"  I  can  not  bear  it,"  said  I,  "  and  that  is  the 
matter." 

She  smiled,  but  her  smile  faded  when  she  looked 
at  me. 

And  then  I  told  her,  sobbing,  how  it  was  ;  that 
I  could  not  go  into  my  future  alone,  —  I  could  not 
do  it !  that  she  did  not  know  how  weak  I  was,  — 
and  reckless,  —  and  wicked  ;  that  she  did  not 
know  what  she  had  been  to  me.  I  begged  her 
not  to  leave  me.  I  begged  her  to  stay  and  help 
me  bear  my  life. 

"  My  dear  !  you  are  as  bad  as  Faith  when  I 
put  her  to  bed  alone." 

"  But,"  I  said,  "  when  Faith  cries,  you  go  to 
her,  you  know." 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  IOI 

"  Are  you  quite  in  earnest,  Mary  ? "  she  asked, 
after  a  pause.  "  You  don't  know  very  much  about 
me,  after  all,  and  there  is  the  child.  It  is  always 
an  experiment,  bringing  two  families  into  lifelong 
relations  under  one  roof.  If  I  could  think  it  best, 
you  might  repent  your  bargain." 

"  /  am  not  '  a  family,' "  I  said,  feebly  trying  to 
laugh.  "Aunt  Winifred,  if  you  and  Faith  only 
will  make  this  your  home,  I  can  never  thank  you, 
never.  I  shall  be  entertaining  my  good  angels, 
and  that  is  the  whole  of  it." 

"  I  have  had  some  thought  of  not  going  back," 
she  said  at  last,  in  a  low,  constrained  voice,  as  if 
she  were  touching  something  that  gave  her  great 
pain,  "  for  Faith's  sake.  I  should  like  to  educate 
her  in  New  England,  if —  I  had  intended  if  we 
stayed  to  rent  or  buy  a  little  home  of  our  own 
somewhere,  but  I  had  been  putting  off  a  decision. 
We  are  most  weak  and  most  selfish  sometimes 
when  we  think  ourselves  strongest  and  noblest, 
Mary.  I  love  my  husband's  people.  I  think  they 
love  me.  I  was  almost  happy  with  them.  It 
seemed  as  if  I  were  carrying  on  his  work  for  him. 
That  was  so  pleasant !  "  She  put  me  down  out  of 
her  arms  and  walked  across  the  room. 


IO2  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

"  I  will  think  the  matter  over,"  she  said,  by  and 
by,  in  her  natural  tones,  "and  let  you  know  to- 
night." 

She  went  away  up  stairs  then,  and  I  did  not 
see  her  again  until  to-night.  I  sent  Faith  up 
with  her  dinner  and  tea,  judging  that  she  would 
rather  see  the  child  than  me.  I  observed,  when 
the  dishes  came  down,  that  she  had  touched  noth- 
ing but  a  cup  of  coffee. 

I  began  to  understand,  as  I  sat  alone  in  the 
parlor  through  the  afternoon,  how  much  I  had 
asked  of  her.  In  my  selfish  distress  at  losing  her, 
I  had  not  thought  of  that.  Faces  that  her  hus- 
band loved,  meadows  and  hills  and  sunsets  that  he 
has  watched,  the  home  where  his  last  step  sounded 
and  his  last  word  was  spoken,  the  grave  where  she 
has  laid  him,  —  this  last  more  than  all,  —  call  after 
her,  and  cling  to  her  with  yearning  closeness.  To 
leave  them,  is  to  leave  the  last  faint  shadow  of  her 
beautiful  past.  It  hurts,  but  she  is  too  brave  to 
cry  out. 

Tea  was  over,  and  Faith  in  bed,  but  still  she  did 
not  come  down.  I  was  sitting  by  the  window, 
watching  a  little  crescent  moon  climb  over  the 
hills,  and  wondering  whether  I  had  better  go  up, 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  IO3 

when  she  came  in  and  stood  behind  me,  and  said, 
attempting  to  laugh:  — 

"  Very  impolite  in  me  to  run  off  so,  was  n't  it  ? 
Cowardly,  too,  I  think.  Well,  Mary  ? " 

"  Well,  Auntie  ? " 

"  Have  you  not  repented  your  proposition  yet  ?  " 

"You  would  excel  as  an  inquisitor,  Mrs.  For- 
ceythe ! " 

"  Then  it  shall  be  as  you  say  ;  as  long  as  you 
want  us  you  shall  have  us,  —  Faith  and  me." 

I  turned  to  thank  her,  but  could  not  when  I  saw 
her  face.  It  was  very  pale  ;  there  was  something 
inexpressibly  sad  about  her  mouth,  and  her  eye- 
lids drooped  heavily,  like  one  weary  from  a  great 
struggle. 

Feeling  for  the  moment  guilty  and  ashamed 
before  her,  as  if  I  had  done  her  wrong,  "It  is 
going  to  be  very  hard  for  you,"  I  said. 

"  Never  mind  about  that,"  she  answered,  quickly. 
"  We  will  not  talk  about  that.  I  knew,  though  I 
did  not  wish  to  know,  that  it  was  best  for  Faith. 
Your  hands  about  my  neck  have  settled  it.  Where 
the  work  is,  there  the  laborer  must  be.  It  is  quite 
plain  now.  I  have  been  talking  it  over  with  them 
all  the  afternoon  ;  it  seems  to  be  what  they  want." 


104  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

"  With  them  "  ?  I  started  at  the  words  ;  who 
had  been  in  her  lonely  chamber  ?  Ah,  it  is  simply 
real  to  her.  Who,  indeed,  but  her  Saviour  and  her 
husband  ? 

She  did  not  seem  inclined  to  talk,  and  stole 
away  from  me  presently,  and  out  of  doors  ;  she 
was  wrapped  in  her  blanket  shawl,  and  had  thrown 
a  shimmering  white  hood  over  her  gray  hair.  I 
wondered  where  she  could  be  going,  and  sat  still  at 
the  window  watching  her.  She  opened  and  shut 
the  gate  softly  ;  and,  turning  her  face  towards  the 
churchyard,  walked  up  the  street  and  out  of  my 
sight.  She  feels  nearer  to  him  in  the  resting-place 
of  the  dead.  Her  heart  cries  after  the  grave  by 
which  she  will  never  sit  and  weep  again  ;  on  which 
she  will  never  plant  the  roses  any  more. 

As  I  sat  watching  and  thinking  this,  the  faint 
light  struck  her  slight  figure  and  little  shimmering 
hood  again,  and  she  walked  down  the  street  and  in 
with  steady  step. 

When  she  came  up  and  stood  beside  me,  smiling, 
with  the  light  knitted  thing  thrown  back  on  her 
shoulders,  her  face  seemed  to  rise  from  it  as  from 
a  snowy  cloud  ;  and  for  her  look, —  I  wish  Raphael 
could  have  had  it  for  one  of  his  rapt  Madonnas. 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  IO5 

"  Now,  Mary,"  she  said,  with  the  sparkle  back 
again  in  her  voice,  "  I  am  ready  to  be  entertaining, 
and  promise  not  to  play  the  hermit  again  very 
soon.  Shall  I  sit  here  on  the  sofa  with  you  ?  Yes, 
my  dear,  I  am  happy,  quite  happy." 

So  then  we  took  this  new  promise  of  home  that 
has  come  to  make  my  life,  if  not  joyful,  something 
less  than  desolate,  and  analyzed  it  in  its  practical 
bearings.  What  a  pity  that  all  pretty  dreams  have 
to  be  analyzed !  I  had  some  notion  about  throw- 
ing our  little  incomes  into  a  joint  family  fund,  but 
she  put  a  veto  to  that ;  I  suppose  because  mine  is 
the  larger.  She  prefers  to  take  board  for  herself 
and  Faith  ;  but,  if  I  know  myself,  she  shall  never 
be  suffered  to  have  the  feeling  of  a  boarder,  and  I 
will  make  her  so  much  at  home  in  my  house  that 
she  shall  not  remember  that  it  is  not  her  own. 

Her  visit  to  Norwich  she  has  decided  to  put  off 
until  the  autumn,  so  that  I  shall  have  her  to  myself 
undisturbed  all  summer. 

I  have  been  looking  at  Roy's  picture  a  long  time, 
and  wondering  how  he  would  like  the  new  plan.  I 
said  something  of  the  sort  to  her. 

"  Why  put  any  '  would  '  in  that  sentence  ?  "  she 
said,  smiling.     "  It  belongs  in  the  present  tense." 
5* 


IO6  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

"  Then  I  am  sure  he  likes  it,"  I  answered,  —  "  he 
likes  it,"  and  I  said  the  words  over  till  I  was  ready 
to  cry  for  rest  in  their  sweet  sound. 

22A 

It  is  Roy's  birthday.  But  I  have  not  spoken 
of  it.  We  used  to  make  a  great  deal  of  these 
little  festivals,  —  but  it  is  of  no  use  to  write  about 
that. 

I  am  afraid  I  have  been  bearing  it  very  badly  all 
day.  She  noticed  my  face,  but  said  nothing  till 
to-night.  Mrs.  Bland  was  down  stairs,  and  I  had 
come  away  alone  up  here  in  the  dark.  I  heard  her 
asking  for  me,  but  would  not  go  down.  By  and  by 
Aunt  Winifred  knocked,  and  I  let  her  in. 

"  Mrs.  Bland  cannot  understand  why  you  don't 
see  her,  Mary,"  she  said,  gently.  "  You  know  you 
have  not  thanked  her  for  those  English  violets  that 
she  sent  the  other  day.  I  only  thought  I  would 
remind  you  ;  she  might  feel  a  little  pained." 

"  I  can't  to-night,  —  not  to-night,  Aunt  Winifred. 
You  must  excuse  me  to  her  somehow.  I  don't 
want  to  go  down." 

"  Is  it  that  you  don't  '  want  to,'  or  is  it  that  you 
can't  ? "  she  said,  in  that  gentle,  motherly  way  of 
hers,  at  which  I  can  never  take  offence.  "  Mary,  I 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  IO/ 

wonder  if  Roy  would  not  a  little  rather  that  you 
would  go  down  ?  " 

It  might  have  been  Roy  himself  who  spoke. 

I  went  down. 


IO8  THE    GATES    AJAR. 


IX. 

June  I. 

A  UNT  WINIFRED  went  to  the  office  this 
•**•  morning,  and  met  Dr.  Bland,  who  walked 
home  with  her.  He  always  likes  to  talk  with  her. 

A  woman  who  knows  something  about  fate,  free- 
will, and  foreknowledge  absolute,  who  is  not  igno- 
rant of  politics,  and  talks  intelligently  of  Agassiz's 
latest  iossil,  who  can  understand  a  German  quota- 
tion, and  has  heard  of  Strauss  and  Neander,  who 
can  dash  her  sprightliness  ably  against  his  old  dry 
bones  of  metaphysics  and  theology,  yet  never  speak 
an  accent  above  that  essentially  womanly  voice  of 
hers,  is,  I  imagine,  a  phenomenon  in  his  social 
experience. 

I  was  sitting  at  the  window  when  they  came  up 
and  stopped  at  the  gate.  Dr.  Bland  lifted  his  hat 
to  me  in  his  grave  way,  talking  the  while  ;  some- 
what eagerly,  too,  I  could  see.  Aunt  Winifred 
answered  him  with  a  peculiar  smile  and  a  few  low 
words  that  I  could  not  hear. 

"  But,  my  dear  madam,"  he  said,  "  the  glory  of 


THE     GATES    AJAR.  ICX) 

God,  you  see,  the  glory  of  God  is  the  primary  con- 
sideration." 

"But  the  glory  of  God  involves  these  lesser 
glories,  as  a  sidereal  system,  though  a  splendid 
whole,  exists  by  the  multiplied  differing  of  one  star 
from  another  star.  Ah,  Dr.  Bland,  you  make  a 
grand  abstraction  out  of  it,  but  it  makes  me  cold," 
—  she  shivered,  half  playfully,  half  involuntarily,  — 
"  it  makes  me  cold.  I  am  very  much  alive  and 
human  ;  and  Christ  was  human  God." 

She  came  in  smiling  a  little  sadly,  and  stood  by 
me,  watching  the  minister  walk  over  the  hill. 

"  How  much  does  that  man  love  his  wife  and 
children  ?  "  she  asked  abruptly. 

"  A  good  deal.     Why  ? " 

"  I  am  afraid  that  he  will  lose  one  of  them,  then, 
before  many  more  years  of  his  life  are  past." 

"  What !  he  has  n't  been  telling  you  that  they 
are  consumptive  or  anything  of  the  sort  ?  " 

"  O  dear  me,  no,"  with  a  merry  laugh,  which  died 
quickly  away  :  "  I  was  only  thinking,  —  there  is 
trouble  in  store  for  him  ;  some  intense  pain,  —  if 
he  is  capable  of  intense  pain,  —  which  shall  shake 
his  cold,  smooth  theorizing  to  the  foundation.  He 
speaks  a  foreign  tongue  when  he  talks  of  bereave- 


HO  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

ment,  of  death,  of  the  future  life.  No  argument 
could  convince  him  of  that,  though,  which  is  the 
worst  of  it." 

"  He  must  think  you  shockingly  heterodox." 

"I  don't  doubt  it.  We  had  a  little  talk  this 
morning,  and  he  regarded  me  with  an  expression  of 
mingled  consternation  and  perplexity  that  was  cu- 
rious. He  is  a  very  good  man.  He  is  not  a  stupid 
man.  I  only  wish  that  he  would  stop  preaching 
and  teaching  things  that  he  knows  nothing  about. 

"  He  is  only  drifting  with  the  tide,  though,"  she 
added,  "  in  his  views  of  this  matter.  In  our  recoil 
from  the  materialism  of  the  Romish  Church,  we 
have,  it  seems  to  me,  nearly  stranded  ourselves  on 
the  opposite  shore.  Just  as,  in  a  rebound  from  the 
spirit  which  would  put  our  Saviour  on  a  level  with 
Buddha  or  Mahomet,  we  have  been  in  danger  of 
forgetting  '  to  begin  as  the  Bible  begins,'  with  his 
humanity.  It  is  the  grandeur  of  inspiration,  that 
it  knows  how  to  balance  truth." 

It  had  been  in  my  mind  for  several  days  to  ask 
Aunt  Winifred  something,  and,  feeling  in  the  mood, 
I  made  her  take  off  her  things  and  devote  herself 
to  me.  My  question  concerned  what  we  call  the 
"  intermediate  state." 


THE     GATES    AJAR.  Ill 

"  I  have  been  expecting  that,"  she  said ;  "  what 
about  it?" 

"What  is  it?" 

"  Life  and  activity." 

"We  do  not  go  to  sleep,  of  course." 

"  I  believe  that  notion  is  about  exploded,  though 
clear  thinkers  like  Whately  have  appeared  to  advo- 
cate it.  Where  it  originated,  I  do  not  know,  unless 
from  the  frequent  comparisons  in  the  Scriptures  of 
death  with  sleep,  which  refer  solely,  I  am  con- 
vinced, to  the  condition  of  body,  and  which  are 
voted  down  by  an  overwhelming  majority  of  de- 
cided statements  relative  to  the  consciousness, "hap- 
piness, and  tangibility  of  the  Ijfe  into  which  we 
immediately  pass." 

"  It  is  intermediate,  in  some  sense,  I  suppose." 

"  It  waits  between  two  other  conditions, — yes; 
I  think  the  drift  of  what  we  are  taught  about  it 
leads  to  that  conclusion.  I  expect  to  become  at 
once  sinless,  but  to  have  a  broader  Christian  char- 
acter many  years  hence  ;  to  be  happy  at  once,  but 
to  be  happier  by  and  by ;  to  find  in  myself  wonder- 
ful new  tastes  and  capacities,  which  are  to  be  im- 
measurably ennobled  and  enlarged  after  the  Resur- 
rection, whatever  that  may  mean." 


112  THE     GATES     AJAR. 

"  What  does  it  mean  ? " 

"  I  know  no  more  than  you,  but  you  shall  hear 
what  I  think,  presently.  I  was  going  to  say  that 
this  seems  to  be  plain  enough  in  the  Bible.  The 
ansrels  took  Lazarus  at  once  to  Abraham.  Dives 

O 

seems  to  have  found  no  interval  between  death  and 
consciousness  of  suffering." 

"  They  always  tell  you  that  that  is  only  a  par- 
able." 

"  But  it  must  mean  something.  No  story  in  the 
Bible  has  been  pulled  to  pieces  and  twisted  about 
as  that  has  been.  We  are  in  danger  of  pulling  and 
twisting  all  sense  out  of  it.  Then  Judas,  having 
hanged  his  wretched  self,  went  to  his  own  place. 
Besides,  there  was  Christ's  promise  to  the  thief." 

I  told  her  that  I  had  heard  Dr.  Bland  say  that 
we  could  not  place  much  dependence  on  that  pas- 
sage, because  "  Paradise  "  did  not  necessarily  mean 
heaven. 

"  But  it  meant  living,  thinking,  enjoying  ;  for 
'  To-day  thou  shalt  be  with  me'  Paul's  beautiful 
perplexed  revery,  however,  would  be  enough  if  it 
stood  alone  ;  for  he  did  not  know  whether  he  would 
rather  stay  in  this  world,  or  depart  and  be  with 
Christ,  which  is  far  better.  With  Christ,  you  see  ; 


THE     GATES    AJAR.  113 

His  three  mysterious  days,  which  typify  our 
intermediate  state,  were  over  then,  and  he  had 
ascended  to  his  Father.  Would  it  be  '  far  better ' 
either  to  leave  this  actual  tangible  life  throbbing 
with  hopes  and  passions,  to  leave  its  busy,  Christ- 
like  working,  its  quiet  joys,  its  very  sorrows  which 
are  near  and  human,  for  a  nap  of  several  ages,  or 
even  for  a  vague,  lazy,  half-alive,  disembodied  exist- 
ence ? " 

"  Disembodied  ?  I  supposed,  of  course,  that  it 
was  disembodied." 

"  I  do  not  think  so.  And  that  brings  us  to  the 
Resurrection.  All  the  tendency  of  Revelation  is  to 
show  that  an  embodied  state  is  superior  to  a  disem- 
bodied one.  Yet  certainly  we  who  love  God  are 
promised  that  death  will  lead  us  into  a  condition 
which  shall  have  the  advantage  of  this :  for  the 
good  apostle  to  die  '  was  gain.'  I  don't  believe,  for 
instance,  that  Adam  and  Eve  have  been  wandering 
about  in  a  misty  condition  all  these  thousands  of 
years.  I  suspect  that  we  have  some  sort  of  body 
immediately  after  passing  out  of  this,  but  that  there 
is  to  come  a  mysterious  change,  equivalent,  per- 
haps, to  a  re-embodiment,  when  our  capacities  for 
action  will  be  greatly  improved,  and  that  in  some 


114  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

manner  this  new  form  will  be  connected  with  this 
*  garment  by  the  soul  laid  by.' " 

"  Deacon  Quirk  expects  to  rise  in  his  own  entire, 
original  body,  after  it  has  lain  in  the  First  Church 
cemetery  a  proper  number  of  years,  under  a  black 
slate  headstone,  adorned  by  a  willow,  and  such  a 
'  cherubim  '  as  that  poor  boy  shot,  —  by  the  way,  if 
I  Ve  laughed  at  that  story  once,  I  have  fifty  times." 

"Perhaps  Deacon  Quirk  would  admire  a  work 
of  art  that  I  found  stowed  away  on  the  top  of  your 
Uncle  Calvin's  bookcases.  It  was  an  old  woodcut 
—  nobody  knows  how  old  —  of  an  interesting  skel- 
eton rising  from  his  grave,  and,  in  a  sprightly  and 
modest  manner,  drawing  on  his  skin,  while  Gabriel, 
with  apoplectic  cheeks,  feet  uppermost  in  the  air, 
was  blowing  a  good-sized  tin  trumpet  in  his  ear  ! 

"  No ;  some  of  the  popular  notions  of  resurrec- 
tion are  simple  physiological  impossibilities,  from 
causes  '  too  tedious  to  specify.'  Imagine,  for  in- 
stance, the  resurrection  of  two  Hottentots,  one  of 
whom  has  happened  to  make  a  dinner  of  the  other 
some  fine  day.  A  little  complication  there !  Or 
picture  the  touching  scene,  when  that  devoted 
husband,  King  Mausolas,  whose  widow  had  him 
burned  and  ate  the  ashes,  should  feel  moved  to 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  115 

institute  a  search  for  his  body  !  It  is  no  wonder 
that  the  infidel  argument  has  the  best  of  it,  when 
we  attempt  to  enforce  a  natural  impossibility.  It  is 
worth  while  to  remember  that  Paul  expressly  stated 
that  we  shall  not  rise  in  our  entire  earthly  bodies. 
The  simile  which  he  used  is  the  seed  sown,  dying 
in,  and  mingling  with,  the  ground.  How  many  of 
its  original  particles  are  found  in  the  full-grown 
corn  ? " 

"Yet  you  believe  that  something  belonging  to  this 
body  is  preserved  for  the  completion  of  another  ? " 

"  Certainly.  I  accept  God's  statement  about  it, 
which  is  as  plain  as  words  can  make  a  statement. 
I  do  not  know,  and  I  do  not  care  to  know,  how  it  is 
to  be  effected.  God  will  not  be  at  a  loss  for  a  way, 
any  more  than  he  is  at  a  loss  for  a  way  to  make  his 
fields  blossom  every  spring.  For  aught  we  know, 
some  invisible  compound  of  an  annihilated  body 
may  hover,  by  a  divine  decree,  around  the  site  of 
death  till  it  is  wanted,  —  sufficient  to  preserve 
identity  as  strictly  as  a  body  can  ever  be  said  to 
preserve  it  ;  and  stranger  things  have  happened. 
You  remember  the  old  Mohammedan  belief  in  the 
one  little  bone  which  is  imperishable.  Prof.  Bush's 
idea  of  our  triune  existence  is  suggestive,  for  a 


Il6  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

notion.  He  believed,  you  know,  that  it  takes  a 
material  body,  a  spiritual  body,  and  a  soul,  to  make 
a  man.  The  spiritual  body  is  enclosed  within  the 
material,  the  soul  within  the  spiritual.  Death  is 
simply  the  slipping  off  of  the  outer  body,  as  a  husk 
slips  off  from  its  kernel.  The  deathless  frame 
stands  ready  then  for  the  soul's  untramntelled  occu- 
pation. But  it  is  a  waste  of  time  to  speculate  over 
such  useless  fancies,  while  so  many  remain  that  will 
vitally  affect  our  happiness." 

It  is  singular ;  but  I  never  gave  a  serious  thought 
— and  I  have  done  some  thinking  about  other 
matters  —  to  my  heavenly  body,  till  that  moment, 
while  I  sat  listening  to  her.  In  fact,  till  Roy  went, 
the  Future  was  a  miserable,  mysterious  blank,  to  be 
drawn  on  and  on  in  eternal  and  joyless  monotony, 
and  to  which,  at  times,  annihilation  seemed  prefer- 
able. I  remember,  when  I  was  a  child,  asking 
father  once,  if  I  were  so  good  that  I  had  to  go  to 
heaven,  whether,  after  a  hundred  years,  God  would 
not  let  me  "  die  out."  More  or  less  of  the  dis- 
position of  that  same  desperate  little  sinner  I  sus- 
pect has  always  clung  to  me.  So  I  asked  Aunt 
Winifred,  in  some  perplexity,  what  she  supposed 
our  bodies  would  be  like. 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  II/ 

"  It  must  be  nearly  all  '  suppose,'  "  she  said,  "  for 
we  are  nowhere  definitely  told.  But  this  is  certain. 
They  will  be  as  real  as  these." 

"  But  these  you  can  see,  you  can  touch." 

"What  would  be  the  use  of  having  a  body  that 
you  can't  see  and  touch  ?  A  body  is  a  body,  not  a 
spirit.  Why  should  you  not,  having  seen  Roy's  old 
smile  and  heard  his  own  voice,  clasp  his  hand  again, 
and  feel  his  kiss  on  your  happy  lips  ? 

"  It  is  really  amusing,"  she  continued,  "  to  sum 
up  the  notions  that  good  people  —  excellent  people 
—  even  thinking  people — have  of  the  heavenly 
body.  Vague  visions  of  floating  about  in  the 
clouds,  of  balancing  —  with  a  white  robe  on,  per- 
haps —  in  stiff  rows  about  a  throne,  like  the  angels 
in  the  old  pictures,  converging  to  an  apex,  or 
ranged  in  semi-circles  like  so  many  marbles.  Mu- 
rillo  has  one  charming  exception.  I  always  take 
a  secret  delight  in  that  little  cherub  of  his,  kicking 
the  clouds  in  the  right-hand  upper  corner  of  the 
Immaculate  Conception  ;  he  seems  to  be  having 
a  good  time  of  it,  in  genuine  baby-fashion.  The 
truth  is,  that  the  ordinary  idea,  if  sifted  accurately, 
reduces  our  eternal  personality  to — gas. 

"  Isaac  Taylor  holds,  that,  as  far  as  the  abstract 


Il8  THE    GATES     AJAR. 

idea  of  spirit  is  concerned,  it  may  just  as  reason- 
ably be  granite  as  ether. 

"  Mrs.  Charles  says  a  pretty  thing  about  this. 
She  thinks  these  '  super-spiritualized  angels '  very 
'  unsatisfactory  '  beings,  and  that  '  the  heart  returns 
with  loving  obstinacy  to  the  young  men  in  long 
white  garments' who  sat  waiting  in  the  sepulchre. 

"  Here  again  I  cling  to  my  conjecture  about 
the  word  '  angel ' ;  for  then  we  should  learn  em- 
phatically something  about  our  future  selves. 

" '  As  the  angels  in  heaven,'  or  '  equal  unto  the 
angels,'  we  are  told  in  another  place,  —  that  may 
mean  simply  what  it  says.  At  least,  if  we  are  to 
resemble  them  in  the  particular  respect  of  which 
the  words  were  spoken,  —  and  that  one  of  the 
most  important  which  could  well  be  selected,  —  it 
is  not  unreasonable  to  infer  that  we  shall  resemble 
them  in  others.  '  In  the  Resurrection,'  by  the 
way,  means,  in  that  connection  and  in  many  others, 
simply  future  state  of  existence,  without  any  refer- 
ence to  the  time  at  which  the  great  bodily  change 
is  to  come. 

" '  But  this  is  a  digression,'  as  the  novelists  say. 
I  was  going  to  say,  that  it  bewilders  me  to  con- 
jecture where  students  of  the  Bible  have  discov- 


THE    GATES    AJAR. 

ered  the  usual  foggy  nonsense  about  the  corpo- 
reity of  heaven. 

"  If  there  is  anything  laid  down  in  plain  state- 
ment, devoid  of  metaphor  or  parable,  simple  and 
unequivocal,  it  is  the  definite  contradiction  of  all 
that  Paul,  in  his  preface  to  that  sublime  apos- 
trophe to  death,  repeats  and  reiterates  it,  lest  we 
should  make  a  mistake  in  his  meaning. 

" '  There  are  celestial  bodies'  '  It  is  raised  a 
spiritual  body'  '  There  is  a  spiritual  body!  '  It 
is  raised  in  incorruption.'  '  It  is  raised  in  glory.' 
'  It  is  raised  in  power.'  Moses,  too,  when  he  came 
to  the  transfigured  mount  in  glory,  had  as  real  a 
body  as  when  he  went  into  the  lonely  mount  to 
die." 

"  But  they  will  be  different  from  these  ?  " 

"  The  glory  of  the  terrestrial  is  one,  the  glory 
of  the  celestial  another.  Take  away  sin  and  sick- 
ness and  misery,  and  that  of  itself  would  make 
difference  enough." 

"  You  do  not  suppose  that  we  shall  look  as  we 
look  now  ? " 

"  I  certainly  do.  At  least,  I  think  it  more  than 
possible  that  the  'human  form  divine,'  or  some- 
thing like  it,  is  to  be  retained.  Not  only  from 


I2O  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

the  fact  that  risen  Elijah  bore  it ;  and  Moses, 
who,  if  he  had  not  passed  through  his  resurrec- 
tion, does  not  seem  to  have  looked  different  from 
the  other,  —  I  have  to  use  those  two  poor  proph- 
ets on  all  occasions,  but,  as  we  are  told  of  them 
neither  by  parable  nor  picture,  they  are  important, 
—  and  that  angels  never  appeared  in  any  other, 
but  because,  in  sinless  Eden,  God  chose  it  for 
Adam  and  Eve.  What  came  in  unmarred  beauty 
direct  from  His  hand  cannot  be  unworthy  of  His 
other  Paradise  '  beyond  the  stars.'  It  would  chime 
in  pleasantly,  too,  with  the  idea  of  Redemption, 
that  our  very  bodies,  free  from  all  the  distortion 
of  guilt,  shall  return  to  something  akin  to  the 
pure  ideal  in  which  He  moulded  them.  Then 
there  is  another  reason,  and  stronger." 

"What  is  that?" 

"The  human  form  has  been  borne  and  digni- 
fied forever  by  Christ.  And,  further  than  that, 
He  ascended  to  His  Father  in  it,  and  lives  there 
in  it  as  human  God  to-day." 

I  had  never  thought  of  that,  and  said  so. 

"Yes,  with  the  very  feet  which  trod  the  dusty 
road  to  Emmaus  ;  the  very  wounded  hands  which 
Thomas  touched,  believing  ;  the  very  lips  which 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  121 

ate  of  the  broiled  fish  and  honeycomb;  the  very 
voice  which  murmured  '  Mary ! '  in  the  garden, 
and,  which  told  her  that  he  ascended  unto  His 
Father  and  her  Father,  to  His  God  and  her  God, 
He  '  was  parted  from  them,'  and  was  received  up 
into  heaven.'  His  death  and  resurrection  sta«d 
forever  the  great  prototype  of  ours.  Otherwise, 
what  is  the  meaning  of  such  statements  as  these : 
'  When  He  shall  appear,  we  shall  be  like  Him ' ; 
The  first  man  (Adam)  is  of  the  earth  ;  the  second 
man  is  the  Lord.  As  we  have  borne  the  image 
of  the  earthy,  we  shall  also  bear  the  image  of  the 
heavenly '  ?  And  what  of  this,  when  we  are  told 
that  our  'vile  bodies,'  being  changed,  shall  be 
fashioned  '  like  unto  his  glorious  body '  ?  " 

I  asked  her  if  she  inferred  from  that,  that  we 
should  have  just  such  bodies  as  the  freedom  from 
pain  and  sin  would  make  of  these. 

"  Flesh  and  blood  cannot  inherit  the  kingdom," 
she  said.  "There  is  no  escaping  that,  even  if  I 
had  the  smallest  desire  to  escape  it,  which  I  have 
not.  Whatever  is  essentially  earthly  and  tempo- 
rary in  the  arrangements  of  this  world  will  be 
out  of  place  and  unnecessary  there.  Earthly  and 
temporary  flesh  and  blood  certainly  are." 


122  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

"  Christ  said  '  A  spirit  hath  not  flesh  and  bones, 
as  ye  see  me  have.' 

"  A  spirit  hath  not ;  and  who  ever  said  that  it 
did  ?  His  body  had  something  that  appeared  like 
them,  certainly.  That  passage,  by  the  way,  has 
led  some  ingenious  writer  on  the  Chemistry  of 
Heaven  to  infer  that  our  bodies  there  will  be  like 
these,  minus  blood !  I  don't  propose  to  spend  my 
time  over  such  investigations.  Summing  up  the 
meaning  of  the  story  of  those  last  days  before 
the  Ascension,  and  granting  the  shade  of  mystery 
which  hangs  over  them,  I  gather  this,  —  that  the 
spiritual  body  is  real,  is  tangible,  is  visible,  is  hu- 
man, but  that  'we  shall  be  changed.'  Some  in- 
definable but  thorough  change  had  come  over 
Him.  He  could  withdraw  Himself  from  the  rec- 
ognition of  Mary,  and  from  the  disciples,  whose 
'  eyes  were  holden,'  as  it  pleased  Him.  He  came 
and  went  through  barred  and  bolted  doors.  He  ap- 
peared suddenly  in  a  certain  place,  without  sound 
of  footstep  or  flutter  of  garment  to  announce  His 
approach.  He  vanished,  and  was  not,  like  a  cloud. 
New  and  wonderful  powers  had  been  given  to  Him, 
of  which,  probably,  His  little  bewildered  group  of 
friends  saw  but  a  few  illustrations. 


THE     GATES    AJAR.  123 

"  And  He  was  yet  man  ?  " 

"  He  was  Jesus  of  Nazareth  until  the  sorrowful 
drama  of  human  life  that  He  had  taken  upon 
Himself  was  thoroughly  finished,  from  manger  to 
sepulchre,  and  from  sepulchre  to  the  right  hand 
of  His  Father." 

"  I  like  to  wonder,"  she  said,  presently,  "  what 
we  are  going  to  look  like  and  be  like.  Ourselves, 
in  the  first  place.  'It  is  I  Myself/  Christ  said. 
Then  to  be  perfectly  well,  never  a  sense  of  pain 
or  weakness,  —  imagine  how  much  solid  comfort, 
if  one  had  no  other,  in  being  forever  rid  of  all 
the  ills  that  flesh  is  heir  to !  Beautiful,  too,  I 
suppose  we  shall  be,  every  one.  Have  you  never 
had  that  come  over  you,  with  a  thrill  of  compas- 
sionate thankfulness,  when  you  have  seen  a  poor 
girl  shrinking,  as  only  girls  can  shrink,  under  the 
life-long  affliction  of  a  marred  face  or  form  ? 
The  loss  or  presence  of  beauty  is  not  as  slight  a 
deprivation  or  blessing  as  the  moralists  would  make 
it  out.  Your  grandmother,  who  was  the  most 
beautiful  woman  I  ever  saw,  the  belle  of  the 
county  all  her  young  days,  and  the  model  for 
artists'  fancy  sketching  even  in  her  old  ones,  as 
modest  as  a  violet  and  as  honest  as  the  sunshine, 


124  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

used  to  have  the  prettiest  little  way  when  we  girls 
were  in  our  teens,  and  she  thought  that  we  must 
be  lectured  a  bit  on  youthful  vanity,  of  adding, 
in  her  quiet  voice,  smoothing  down  her  black  silk 
apron  as  she  spoke,  '  But  still  it  is  a  thing  to 
be  thankful  for,  my  dear,  to  have  a  comely  coun- 
tenance! 

"But  to  return  to  the  track  and  our  future 
bodies.  We  shall  find  them  vastly  convenient,  un- 
doubtedly with  powers  of  which  there  is  no  dream- 
ing. Perhaps  they  will  be  so  one  with  the  soul 
that  to  will  will  be  to  do,  hindrance  out  of  the 
question.  I,  for  instance,  sitting  here  by  you,  and 
thinking  that  I  should  like  to  be  in  Kansas,  would 
be  there.  There  is  an  interesting  bit  of  a  hint  in 
Daniel  about  Gabriel,  who,  '  being  caused  to  fly 
swiftly,  touched  him  about  the  time  of  the  evening 
oblation."' 

"  But  do  you  not  make  a  very  material  kind  of 
heaven  out  of  such  suppositions  ?  " 

"  It  depends  upon  what  you  mean  by  '  material.' 
The  term  does  not,  to  my  thinking,  imply  degrada- 
tion, except  so  far  as  it  is  associated  with  sin.  Dr. 
Chalmers  has  the  right  of  it,  when  he  talks  about 
' spiritual  materialism'  He  says  in  his  sermon 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  125 

on  the  New  Heavens  and  Earth,  —  which,  by  the 
way,  you  should  read,  and  from  which  I  wish  a 
few  more  of  our  preachers  would  learn  something, 
—  that  we  '  forget  that  on  the  birth  of  materialism, 
when  it  stood  out  in  the  freshness  of  those  glories 
which  the  great  Architect  of  Nature  had  impressed 
upon  it,  that  then  the  "morning  stars  sang  to- 
gether, and  all  the  sons  of  God  shouted  for  joy." ' 
I  do  not  believe  in  a  gross  heaven,  but  I  believe 
in  a  reasonable  one." 

4th. 

We  have  been  devoting  ourselves  to  feminine 
vanities  all  day  out  in  the  orchard.  Aunt  Wini- 
fred has  been  making  her  summer  bonnet,  and  I 
some  linen  collars.  I  saw,  though  she  said  noth- 
ing, that  she  thought  the  crepe  a  little  gloomy,  and 
I  am  going  to  wear  these  in  the  mornings  to  please 
her. 

She  has  an  accumulation  of  work  on  hand,  and 
in  the  afternoon  I  offered  to  tuck  a  little  dress 
for  Faith,  —  the  prettiest  pink  barege  affair  pale 
is  a  blush  rose,  and  about  as  delicate.  Faith, 
who  had  been  making  mud-pies  in  the  swamp, 
and  was  spattered  with  black  peat  from  curls  to 
stockings,  looked  on  approvingly,  and  wanted  it 


126  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

to  wear  on  a  flag-root  expedition  to-morrow.  It 
seemed  to  do  me  good  to  do  something  for  some- 
body after  all  this  lonely  and  —  I  suspect  —  selfish 
idleness. 

6th. 

I  read  a  little  of  Dr.  Chalmers  to-day,  and  went 
laughing  to  Aunt  Winifred  with  the  first  sentence. 

"  There  is  a  limit  to  the  revelations  of  the  Bible 
about  futurity,  and  it  were  a  mental  or  spiritual 
trespass  to  go  beyond  it." 

"Ah!  but,"  she  said,  "look  a  little  farther 
down." 

And  I  read,  "  But  while  we  attempt  not  to  be 
'wise  above  that  which  is  written,'  we  should  at- 
tempt, and  that  most  studiously,  to  be  wise  up  to 
that  which  is  written." 

8th. 

It  occurred  to  me  to-day,  that  it  was  a  notice- 
able fact,  that,  among  all  the  visits  of  angels  to 
this  world  of  which  we  are  told,  no  one  seems 
to  have  discovered  in  any  the  presence  of  a 
dead  fr'end.  If  redeemed  men  are  subject  to  the 
same  laws  as  they,  why  did  such  a  thing  never 
happen  ?  I  asked  Aunt  Winifred,  and  she  said 
that  the  question  reminded  her  of  St  Augustine's 


THE     GATES    AJAR.  I2/ 

lonely  cry  thirty  years  after  the  death  of  Monica : 
"  Ah,  the  dead  do  not  come  back ;  for,  had  it  been 
possible,  there  has  not  been  a  night  when  I  should 
not  have  seen  my  mother ! "  There  seemed  to 
be  two  reasons,  she  said,  why  there  should  be  no 
exceptions  to  the  law  of  silence  imposed  between 
us  and  those  who  have  left  us  ;  one  of  which  was, 
that  we  should  be  overpowered  with  familiar  curi- 
osity about  them,  which  nobody  seems  to  have 
dared  to  express  in  the  presence  of  angels,  and 
the  secrets  of  their  life  God  has  decreed  that  it  is 
unlawful  to  utter. 

"  But  Lazarus,  and  Jairus's  little  daughter,  and 
the  dead  raised  at  the  Crucifixion,  —  what  of 
them  ?  "  I  asked. 

"  I  cannot  help  conjecturing  that  they  were 
suffered  to  forget  their  glimpse  of  spiritual  life," 
she  said.  "  Since  their  resurrection  was  a  miracle, 
there  might  be  a  miracle  throughout.  At  least, 
their  lips  must  have  been  sealed,  for  not  a  word 
of  their  testimony  has  been  saved.  When  Lazarus 
dined  with  Simon,  after  he  had  come  back  to  life, 
—  and  of  that  feast  we  have  a  minute  account  in 
every  Gospel,  — nobody  seems  to  have  asked,  or  he 
to  have  answered,  any  questions  about  it. 


128  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

"  The  other  reason  is  a  sorrowfully  sufficient  one 
It  is  that  every  lost  darling  has  not  gone  to  heaven. 
Of  all  the  mercies  that  our  Father  has  given,  this 
blessed  uncertainty,  this  long  unbroken  silence, 
may  be  the  dearest.  Bitterly  hard  for  you  and  me, 
but  what  are  thousands  like  you  and  me  weighed 
against  one  who  stands  beside  a  hopeless  grave  ? 
Think  a  minute  what  mourners  there  have  been, 
and  whom  they  have  mourned !  Ponder  one  such 
solitary  instance  as  that  of  Vittoria  Colonna,  won- 
dering, through  her  widowed  years,  if  she  could 
ever  be  '  good  enough '  to  join  wicked  Pescara  in 
another  world !  This  poor  earth  holds  —  God  only 
knows  how  many,  God  make  them  very  few !  — 
Vittorias.  Ah,  Mary,  what  right  have  we  to  com- 
plain ? " 

9th. 

To-night  Aunt  Winifred  had  callers,  —  Mrs. 
Quirk  and  (O  Homer  aristocracy  !)  the  butcher's 
wife,  —  and  it  fell  to  my  lot  to  put  Faith  to  bed. 

The  little  maiden  seriously  demurred.  Cousin 
Mary  was  very  good,  —  O  yes,  she  was  good 
enough,  —  but  her  mamma  was  a  great  deal  good- 
er  ;  and  why  could  n't  little  peoples  sit  up  till  nine 
o'clock  as  well  as  big  peoples,  she  should  like  to 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  I2Q 

know!  Finally,  she  came  to  the  gracious  conclu- 
sion that  perhaps  I  'd  do,  made  me  carry  her  all 
the  way  up  stairs,  and  dropped,  like  a  little  lump 
of  lead,  half  asleep  on  my  shoulder,  before  two 
buttons  were  unfastened. 

Feeling  under  some  sort  of  theological  obliga- 
tion to  hear  her  say  her  prayers,  I  pulled  her  curls 
a  little  till  she  awoke,  and  went  through  with 
"  Now  I  lay  me  down  to  sleep,  I  pway  ve  Lord," 
triumphantly.  I  supposed  that  was  the  end,  but 
it  seems  that  she  has  been  also  taught  the  Lord's 
Prayer,  which  she  gave  me  promptly  to  understand. 

"  O,  see  here  !  That  is  n't  all.  I  can  say  Our 
Father,  and  you  Ve  got  to  help  me  a  lot ! " 

This  very  soon  became  a  self-evident  proposi- 
tion ;  but  by  our  united  efforts  we  managed,  after 
tribulations  manifold,  to  arrive  successfully  at  "  For 
ever'n'  ever'n'  ever'n'  A-mcn." 

"Dear  me,"  she  said,  jumping  up  with  a  yawn, 
"  I  think  that 's  a  dreadful  long-tailed  prayer,  — 
don't  you,  Cousin  Mary  ? " 

"  Now  I  must  kiss  mamma  good  night,"  she 
announced,  when  she  was  tucked  up  at  last. 

"  But  mamma  kissed  you  good  night  before  you 
came  up." 

6» 


I3O  THE     GATES     AJAR. 

"  O,  so  she  did.  Yes,  I  'member.  Well,  it 's 
papa  I  Ve  got  to  kiss.  I  knew  there  was  some- 
body." 

I  looked  at  her  in  perplexity. 

"  Why,  there  ! "  she  said,  "  in  the  upper  drawer, 
—  my  pretty  little  papa  in  a  purple  frame.  Don't 
you  know  ? " 

I  went  to  the  bureau-drawer,  and  found  in  a 
case  of  velvet  a  small  ivory  painting  of  her  father. 
This  I  brought,  wondering,  and  the  child  took  it 
reverently  and  kissed  the  pictured  lips. 

"  Faith,"  I  said,  as  I  laid  it  softly  back,  "  do  you 
always  do  this  ? " 

"  Do  what  ?  Kiss  papa  good  night  ?  O  yes, 
I  've  done  that  ever  since  I  was  a  little  girl,  you 
know.  I  guess  I've  always  kissed  him  pretty 
much.  When  I  'm  a  naughty  girl  he  feels  real 
sorry.  He 's  gone  to  heaven.  I  like  him.  O  yes, 
and  then,  when  I  'm  through  kissing,  mamma 
kisses  him  too." 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  13! 


X. 

June  n. 

T  WAS  in  her  room  this  afternoon  while  she 
•*•  was  dressing.  I  like  to  watch  her  brush  her 
beautiful  gray  hair ;  it  quite  alters  her  face  to 
have  it  down  ;  it  seems  to  shrine  her  in  like  a 
cloud,  and  the  outlines  of  her  cheeks  round  out, 
and  she  grows  young. 

"  I  used  to  be  proud  of  my  hair  when  I  was  a 
girl,"  she  said  with  a  slight  blush,  as  she  saw  me 
looking  at  her ;  "  it  was  all  I  had  to  be  vain  of, 
and  I  made  the  most  of  it.  Ah  well !  I  was 
dark-haired  three  years  ago* 

"  O  you  regular  old  woman  ! "  she  added,  smiling 
at  herself  in  the  mirror,  as  she  twisted  the  silver 
coils  flashing  through  her  fingers.  "Well,  when 
I  am  in  heaven,  I  shall  have  my  pretty  brown  hair 
again." 

It  seemed  odd  enough  to  hear  that ;  then  the 
next  minute  it  did  not  seem  odd  at  all,  but  the 
most  natural  thing  in  the  world. 


132  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

June  14. 

She  said  nothing  to  me  about  the  anniversary 
and,  though  it  has  been  in  my  thoughts  all  the 
time,  I  said  nothing  to  her.  I  thought  that  she 
would  shut  herself  up  for  the  day,  and  was  rather 
surprised  that  she  was  about  as  usual  busily  at 
work,  chatting  with  me,  and  playing  with  Faith. 
Just  after  tea,  she  went  away  alone  for  a  time, 
and  came  back  a  little  quiet,  but  that  was  all.  I 
was  for  some  reason  impressed  with  the  feeling 
that  she  kept  the  day  in  memory,  not  so  much  as 
the  day  of  her  mourning  as  of  his  release. 

Longing  to  do  something  for  her,  yet  not  know- 
ing what  to  do,  I  went  into  the  garden  while  she 
was  away,  and,  finding  some  carnations,  that  shone 
like  stars  in  the  dying  light,  I  gathered  them  all, 
and  took  them  to  h§r  room,  and,  filling  my  tiny 
porphyry  vase,  left  them  on  the  bracket,  under 
the  photograph  of  Uncle  Forceythe  that  hangs 
by  the  window. 

When  she  found  them,  she  called  me,  and  kissed 
me.  "  Thank  you,  dear,"  she  said,  "  and  thank  God 
too,  Mary,  for  me.  TLat  he.  should  have  been 
happy,  —  happy  and  out  of  pain,  for  three  long 
beautiful  years !  O,  think  of  that  1 " 


THE     GATES    AJAR.  133 

When  I  was  in  her  room  with  the  flowers,  I 
passed  the  table  on  which  her  little  Bible  lay 
open.  A  mark  of  rich  ribbon  —  a  black  ribbon 
—  fell  across  the  pages ;  it  bore  in  silver  text 
these  words  :  — 

"  Thou  shalt  have  no  other  gods  before  me? 

20th. 

"  I  thank  thee,  my  God,  the  river  of  Lethe  may 
indeed  flow  through  the  Elysian  Fields,  —  it  does 
not  water  the  Christian's  Paradise." 

Aunt  Winifred  was  saying  that  over  to  herself 
in  a  dreamy  undertone  this  morning,  and  I  hap- 
pened to  hear  her. 

"Just  a  quotation,  dear,"  she  said,  smiling,  in 
answer  to  my  look  of  inquiry,  "  I  could  n't  origi- 
nate so  pretty  a  thing.  Is  ritit.  pretty  ? " 

"  Very ;  but  I  am  not  sure  that  I  understand  it." 

"  You  thought  that  forgetfulness  would  be  ne- 
cessary to  happiness  ? " 

"  Why,  —  yes  ;  as  far  as  I  had  ever  thought 
about  it ;  that  is,  after  our  last  ties  with  this 
world  are  broken.  It  does  not  seem  to  me  that 
I  could  be  happy  to  remember  all  that  I  have 
suffered  and  all  that  I  have  sinned  here." 


134  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

"  But  the  last  of  all  the  sins  will  be  as  if  it  had 
never  been.  Christ  takes  care  of  that  No  shad- 
ow of  a  sense  of  guilt  can  dog  you,  or  affect 
your  relations  to  Him  or  your  other  friends. 
The  last  pain  borne,  the  last  tear,  the  last  sigh, 
the  last  lonely  hour,  the  last  unsatisfied  dream,  for- 
ever gone  by  ;  why  should  not  the  dead  past  bury 
its  dead?" 

"  Then  why  remember  it  ? " 

" '  Save  but  to  swell  the  sense  of  being  blest.' 
Besides,  forgetfulness  of  the  disagreeable  things 
of  this  life  implies  forgetfulness  of  the  pleasant 
ones.  They  are  all  tangled  together." 

"To  be  sure.  I  don't  know  that  I  should  like 
that." 

"  Of  course  you  would  n't.  Imagine  yourself  in 
a  state  of  being  where  you  and  Roy  had  lost  your 
past ;  all  that  you  had  borne  and  enjoyed,  and 
hoped  and  feared,  together ;  the  pretty  little  mem- 
ories of  your  babyhood,  and  first  'half-days'  at 
school,  when  he  used  to  trudge  along  beside  you, 
—  little  fellow !  how  many  times  I  have  watched 
him!  —  holding  you  tight  by  the  apron-sleeve  or 
hat-string,  or  bits  of  fat  fingers,  lest  you  should 
run  away  or  fall.  Then  the  old  Academy  pranks, ' 


THE     GATES     AJAR.  135 

out  of  which  you  used  to  help  each  other ;  his 
little  chivalry  and  elder-brotherly  advice  ;  the  mis- 
chief in  his  eyes ;  some  of  the  '  Sunday-night 
talks ' ;  the  first  novel  that  you  read  and  dreamed 
over  together  ;  the  college  stories  ;  the  chats  over 
the  corn-popper  by  firelight;  the  earliest,  earnest 
looking-on  into  life  together,  its  temptations  con- 
quered, its  lessons  learned,  its  disappointments 
faced  together,  —  always  you  two,  —  would  you 
like  to,  are  you  likely  to,  forget  all  this  ? 

"  Roy  might  as  well  be  not  Roy,  but  a  strange 
angel,  if  you  should.  Heaven  will  be  not  less 
heaven,  but  more,  for  this  pleasant  remembering. 
So  many  other  and  greater  and  happier  memories 
will  fill  up  the  time  then,  that  after  years  these 
things  may  —  probably  will — seem  smaller  than 
it  seems  to  us  now  they  can  ever  be  ;  but  they 
will,  I  think,  be  always  dear ;  just  as  we  look 
back  to  our  baby-selves  with  a  pitying  sort  of 
fondness,  and,  though  the  little  creatures  are  of 
small  enough  use  to  us  now,  yet  we  like  to  keep 
good  friends  with  them  for  old  times'  sake. 

"  I  have  no  doubt  that  you  and  I  shall  sit 
down  some  summer  afternoon  in  heaven  and  talk 
over  what  we  have  been  saying  to-day,  and  laugh 


136  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

perhaps  at  all  the  poor  little  dreams  we  have 
been  dreaming  of  what  has  not  entered  into  the 
heart  of  man.  You  see  it  is  certain  to  be  so 
much  better  than  anything  that  I  can  think  of; 
which  is  the  comfort  of  it.  And  Roy  — " 
"  Yes,  some  more  about  Roy,  please." 
"  Supposing  he  were  to  come  right  into  the 
room  now,  —  and  I  slipped  out,  —  and  you  had 
him  all  to  yourself  again  —  Now,  dear,  don't  cry, 
but  wait  a  minute  !  "  Her  caressing  hand  fell  on 
my  hair.  "  I  did  not  mean  to  hurt  you,  but  to 
say  that  your  first  talk  with  him,  after  you  stand 
face  to  face,  may  be  like  that. 

"  Remembering  this  life  is  going  to  help  us 
amazingly,  I  fancy,  to  appreciate  the  next,"  she 
added,  by  way  of  period.  "  Christ  seems  to  have 
thought  so,  when  he  called  to  the  minds  of  those 
happy  people  what,  in  that  unconscious  minister- 
ing of  lowly  faith  which  may  never  reap  its  sheaf 
in  the  field  where  the  seed  was  sown,  they  had 
not  had  the  comfort  of  finding  out  before,  — '  I 
was  sick  and  in  prison,  and  ye  visited  me.'  And 
to  come  again  to  Abraham  in  the  parable,  did  he 
not  say,  '  Son,  remember  that  thou  in  thy  lifetime 
hadst  good  things  and  Lazarus  evil '  ? " 


THE    GATES     AJAR.  137 

"  I  wonder  what  it  is  going  to  look  like,"  I 
said,  as  soon  as  I  could  put  poor  Dives  out  of 
my  mind. 

"  Heaven  ?  Eye  hath  not  seen,  but  I  have  my 
fancies.  I  think  I  want  some  mountains,  and  very 
many  trees." 

"  Mountains  and  trees  !  " 

"  Yes  ;  mountains  as  we  see  them  at  sunset  and 
sunrise,  or  when  the  maples  are  on  fire  and  there 
are  clouds  enough  to  make  great  purple  shadows 
chase  each  other  into  lakes  of  light,  over  the  tops 
and  down  the  sides,  —  the  ideal  of  mountains 
which  we  catch  in  rare  glimpses,  as  we  catch  the 
ideal  of  everything.  Trees  as  they  look  when  the 
wind  cooes  through  them  on  a  June  afternoon  ; 
elms  or  lindens  or  pines  as  cool  as  frost,  and  yel- 
low sunshine  trickling  through  on  moss.  Trees 
in  a  forest  so  thick  that  it  shuts  out  the  world, 
and  you  walk  like  one  in  a  sanctuary.  Trees 
pierced  by  stars,  and  trees  in  a  bath  of  summer 
moons  to  which  the  thrill  of  '  Love's  young  dream' 
shall  cling  forever  —  But  there  is  no  end  to  one's 
fancies.  Some  water,  too,  I  would  like." 

"  There  shall  be  no  more  sea." 

"Perhaps  not;  though,  as  the   sea  is  the  great 


138  THE     GATES    AJAR. 

type  of  separation  and  of  destruction,  that  may  be 
only  figurative.  But  I  'm  not  particular  about  the 
sea,  if  I  can  have  rivers  and  little  brooks,  and  foun- 
tains of  just  the  right  sort ;  the  fountains  of  this 
world  don't  please  me  generally.  I  want  a  little 
brook  to  sit  and  sing  to  Faith  by.  O,  I  forgot ! 
she  will  be  a  large  girl  probably,  won't  she  ? " 

"Never  too  large  to  like  to  hear  your  mother 
sing,  will  you,  Faith  ?  " 

"  O  no,"  said  Faith,  who  bobbed  in  and  out 
again  like  a  canary  just  then,  —  "not  unless  I 'm 
dreadful  big,  with  long  dresses  and  a  waterfall,  you 
know.  I  s'pose,  maybe,  I  'd  have  to  have  little 
girls  myself  to  sing  to,  then.  I  hope  they'll  be- 
have better'n  Mary  Ann  does.  She's  lost  her 
other  arm,  and  all  her  sawdust  is  just  running  out. 
Besides,  Kitty  thought  she  was  a  mouse,  and  ran 
down  cellar  with  her,  and  she 's  all  shooken  up, 
somehow.  She  don't  look  very  pretty." 

"  Flowers  too,"  her  mother  went  on,  after  the  in- 
terruption. "Not  all  amaranth  and  asphodel,  but 
of  variety  and  color  and  beauty  unimagined  ;  glo- 
rified lilies  of  the  valley,  heavenly  tea-rose  buds, 
and  spiritual  harebells  among  them.  O,  how  your 
poor  mother  used  to  say,  —  you  know  flowers  were 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  139 

her  poetry,  —  coming  in  weak  and  worn  from  her 
garden  in  the  early  part  of  her  sickness,  hands  and 
lap  and  basket  full :  '  Winifred,  if  I  only  supposed 
I  could  have  some  flowers  in  heaven  I  should  n't 
be  half  so  afraid  to  go  ! '  I  had  not  thought  as 
much  about  these  things  then  as  I  have  now,  or 
I  should  have  known  better  how  to  answer  her. 
I  should  like,  if  I  had  my  choice,  to  have  day-lilies 
and  carnations  fresh  under  my  windows  all  the 
time." 

"  Under  your  windows  ?  " 

"  Yes.     I  hope  to  have  a  home  of  my  own." 

"  Not  a  house  ?  " 

"  Something  not  unlike  it.  In  the  Father's 
house  are  many  mansions.  Sometimes  I  fancy  that 
those  words  have  a  literal  meaning  which  the 
simple  men  who  heard  them  may  have  understood 
better  than  we,  and  that  Christ  is  truly  'preparing' 
my  home  for  me.  He  must  be  there,  too,  you  see, 
—  I  mean  John." 

I  believe  that  gave  me  some  thoughts  that  I 
ought  not  to  have,  and  so  I  made  no  reply. 

"  If  we  have  trees  and  mountains  and  flowers 
and  books,"  she  went  on,  smiling,  "  I  don't  see  why 
not  have  houses  as  well.  Indeed,  they  seem  to 


I4O  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

me  as  supposable  as  anything  can  be  which  is 
guess-work  at  the  best ;  for  what  a  homeless,  deso- 
late sort  of  sensation  it  gives  one  to  think  of  people 
wandering  over  the  'sweet  fields  beyond  the  flood' 
without  a  local  habitation  and  a  name.  What 
could  be  done  with  the  millions  who,  from  the  time 
of  Adam,  have  been  gathering  there,  unless  they 
lived  under  the  conditions  of  organized  society  ? 
Organized  society  involves  homes,  not  unlike  the 
homes  of  this  world. 

"  What  other  arrangement  could  be  as  pleasant, 
or  could  be  pleasant  at  all  ?  Robertson's  definition 
of  a  church  exactly  fits.  *  More  united  in  each 
other,  because  more  united  in  God.'  A  happy 
home  is  the  happiest  thing  in  the  world.  I  do 
not  see  why  it  should  not  be  in  any  world.  I  do 
not  believe  that  all  the  little  tendernesses  of  family 
ties  are  thrown  by  and  lost  with  this  life.  In  fact, 
Mary,  I  cannot  think  that  anything  which  has  in 
it  the  elements  of  permanency  is  to  be  lost,  but 
sin.  Eternity  cannot  be  —  it  cannot  be  the  great 
blank  ocean  which  most  of  us  have  somehow  or 
other  been  brought  up  to  feel  that  it  is,  which  shall 
swallow  up,  in  a  pitiless,  glorified  way,  all  the  little 
brooks  of  our  delight.  So  I  expect  to  have  my 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  14! 

beautiful  home,  and  my  husband,  and  Faith,  as  I 
had  them  here  ;  with  many  differences  and  great 
ones,  but  mine  just  the  same.  Unless  Faith  goes 
into  a  home  of  her  own,  —  the  little  creature  !  I 
suppose  she  can't  always  be  a  baby. 

"  Do  you  remember  what  a  pretty  little  wistful 
way  Charles  Lamb  has  of  wondering  about  all  this  ? 

" '  Shall  I  enjoy  friendships  there,  wanting  the 
smiling  indications  which  point  me  to  them  here, 
—  "  the  sweet  assurance  of  a  look "  ?  Sun,  and 
sky,  and  breeze,  and  solitary  walks,  and  summer 
holidays,  and  the  greenness  of  fields,  and  the  deli- 
cious juices  of  meats  and  fish,  and  society,  .... 
and  candle-light  and  fireside  conversations,  and  in- 
nocent vanities,  and  jests,  and  irony  itself, — do 
these  things  go  out  with  life  ? ' ' 

"  Now,  Aunt  Winifred ! "  I  said,  sitting  up 
straight,  "  what  am  I  to  do  with  these  beautiful 
heresies  ?  If  Deacon  Quirk  should  hear  !  " 

"  I  do  not  see  where  the  heresy  lies.  As  I  hold 
fast  by  the  Bible,  I  cannot  be  in  much  danger." 

"  But  you  don't  glean  your  conjectures  from  the 
Bible." 

"  I  conjecture  nothing  that  the  Bible  contradicts. 
I  do  not  believe  as  truth  indisputable  anything  that 


142  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

the  Bible  does  not  give  me.  But  I  reason  from 
analogy  about  this,  as  we  all  do  about  other  mat- 
ters. Why  should  we  not  have  pretty  things  in 
heaven?  If  this  'bright  and  beautiful  economy' 
of  skies  and  rivers,  of  grass  and  sunshine,  of  hills 
and  valleys,  is  not  too  good  for  such  a  place  as  this 
world,  will  there  be  any  less  variety  of  the  bright 
and  beautiful  in  the  next?  There  is  no  reason 
for  supposing  that  the  voice  of  God  will  speak  to 
us  in  thunder-claps,  or  that  it  will  not  take  to  it- 
self the  thousand  gentle,  suggestive  tongues  of  a 
nature  built  on  the  ruins  of  this,  an  unmarred 
system  of  beneficence. 

"There  is  a  pretty  argument  in  the  fact  that 
just  such  sunrises,  such  opening  of  buds,  such 
fragrant  dropping  of  fruit,  such  bells  in  the  brooks, 
such  dreams  at  twilight,  and  such  hush  of  stars, 
were  fit  for  Adam  and  Eve,  made  holy  man  and 
woman.  How  do  we  know  that  the  abstract  idea 
of  a  heaven  needs  imply  anything  very  much  un- 
like Eden  ?  There  is  some  reason  as  well  as  po- 
etry in  the  conception  of  a  '  Paradise  Regained.' 
A  '  new  earth  wherein  dwelleth  righteousness.'  " 

"  But  how  far  is  it  safe  to  trust  to  this  kind  of 
argument  ? " 


THE     GATES    AJAR.  143 

"  Bishop   Butler  will  answer  you  better  than  I. 

• 

Let  me  see,  —  Isaac  Taylor  says  something  about 
that." 

She  went  to  the  bookcase  for  his  "  Physical 
Theory  of  Another  Life,"  and,  finding  her  place, 
showed  me  this  passage  :  — 

"  If  this  often  repeated  argument  from  analogy 
is  to  be  termed,  as  to  the  conclusions  it  involves, 
a  conjecture  merely,  we  ought  then  to  abandon 
altogether  every  kind  of  abstract  reasoning  ;  nor 
will  it  be  easy  afterwards  to  make  good  any  prin- 
ciple of  natural  theology.  In  truth,  the  very  basis 
of  reasoning  is  shaken  by  a  scepticism  so  sweep- 
ing as  this." 

And  in  another  place  :  — 

"  None  need  fear  the  consequences  of  such  en- 
deavors who  have  well  learned  the  prime  principle 
of  sound  philosophy,  namely,  not  to  allow  the  most 
plausible  and  pleasing  conjectures  to  unsettle  our 
convictions  of  truth  ....  resting  upon  positive  evi' 
dence.  If  there  be  any  who  frown  upon  all  such 
attempts,  .....  they  would  do  well  to  consider,  that 
although  individually,  and  from  the  constitution 
of  their  minds,  they  may  find  it  very  easy  to  ab- 
stain from  every  path  of  excursive  meditation,  it 


144  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

is  not  so  with  others  who  almost  irresistibly  are 
borne  forward  to  the  vast  field  of  universal  con- 
templation, —  a  field  from  which  the  human  mind 
is  not  to  be  barred,  and  which  is  better  taken 
possession  of  by  those  who  reverently  bow  to  the 
authority  of  Christianity,  than  left  open  to  im- 
piety." 

"Very  good,"  I  said,  laying  down  the  book. 
"But  about  those  trees  and  houses,  and  the  rest 
of  your  '  pretty  things '  ?  Are  they  to  be  like 
these  ? " 

"  I  don't  suppose  .that  the  houses  will  be  made 
of  oak  and  pine  and  nailed  together,  for  instance. 
But  I  hope  for  heavenly  types  of  nature  and  of 
art.  Something  that  will  be  to  us  then  what  these 
are  now.  That  is  the  amount  of  it.  They  may 
be  as  '  spiritual '  as  you  please ;  they  will  answer 
all  the  purpose  to  us.  As  we  are  not  spiritual 
beings  yet,  however,  I  am  under  the  necessity  of 
calling  them  by  their  earthly  names.  You  re- 
member Plato's  old  theory,  that  the  ideal  of 
everything  exists  eternally  in  the  mind  of  God. 
If  that  is  so,  —  and  I  do  not  see  how  it  can  be 
otherwise,  —  then  whatever  of  God  is  expressed  to 
us  in  this  world  by  flower,  or  blade  of  grass,  or 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  145 

human  face,  why  should  not  that  be  expressed 
forever  in  heaven  by  something  corresponding  to 
flower,  or  grass,  or  human  face  ?  I  do  not  mean 
that  the  heavenly  creation  will  be  less  real  than 
these,  but  more  so.  Their  '  spirituality  '  is  of 
such  a  sort  that  our  gardens  and  forests  and 
homes  are  but  shadows  of  them. 

"  You  don't  know  how  I  amuse  myself  at  night 
thinking  this  all  over  before  I  go  to  sleep  ;  won- 
dering what  one  thing  will  be  like,  and  another 
thing  ;  planning  what  I  should  like  ;  thinking  that 
John  has  seen  it  all,  and  wondering  if  he  is  laugh- 
ing at  me  because  I  know  so  little  about  it.  I 
tell  you,  Mary,  there  's  a  '  deal  o'  comfort  in  't,'  as 
Phrebe  says  about  her  cup  of  tea." 


5- 

Aunt  Winifred  has  been  hunting  up  a  Sunday- 
school  class  for  herself  and  one  for  me  ;  which 
is  a  venture  that  I  never  was  persuaded  into 
undertaking  before.  She  herself  is  fast  becoming 
acquainted  with  the  poorer  people  of  the  town. 

I  find  that  she  is  a  thoroughly  busy  Christian, 
with  a  certain  "week-day  holiness"  that  is  strong 
and  refreshing,  like  a  west  wind.  Church-going, 
7  J 


146  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

and  conversations  on  heaven,  by  no  means  exhaust 
her  vitality. 

She  told  me  a  pretty  thing  about  her  class ;  it 
happened  the  first  Sabbath  that  she  took  it.  Her 
scholars  are  young  girls  of  from  fourteen  to  eigh- 
teen years  of  age,  children  of  church-members, 
most  of  them.  She  seemed  to  have  taken  their 
hearts  by  storm.  She  says,  "  They  treated  me  very 
prettily,  and  made  me  love  them  at  once." 

Clo  Bentley  is  in  the  class  ;  Clo  is  a  pretty, 
soft-eyed  little  creature,  with  a  shrinking  mouth, 
and  an  absorbing  passion  for  music,  which  she 
has  always  been  too  poor  to  gratify.  I  suspect 
that  her  teacher  will  make  a  pet  of  her.  She 
says  that  in  the  course  of  her  lesson,  or,  in  her 
words,  — 

"  While  we  were  all  talking  together,  somebody 
pulled  my  sleeve,  and  there  was  Clo  in  the  corner, 
with  her  great  brown  eyes  fixed  on  me.  '  See 
here  ! '  she  said  in  a  whisper,  '  I  can't  be  good  ! 
I  would  be  good  if  I  could  only  just  have  a 
piano  ! ' 

"'Well,  Clo,'  I  said,  'if  you  will  be  a  good  girl, 
and  go  to  heaven,  I  think  you  will  have  a  piano 
there,  and  play  just  as  much  as  you  care  to.' 


THE     GATES    AJAR.  147 

"  You  ought  to  have  seen  the  look  the  child 
gave  me  !  Delight  and  fear  and  incredulous  be- 
wilderment tumbled  over  each  other,  as  if  I  had 
proposed  taking  her  into  a  forbidden  fairy-land. 

"  '  Why,  Mrs.  Forceythe  !  Why,  they  won't  let 
anybody  have  a  piano  up  there !  not  in  heaven  ? ' 

"  I  laid  down  the  question-book,  and  asked  what 
kind  of  place  she  supposed  that  heaven  was  going 
to  be. 

" '  O,'  she  said,  with  a  dreary  sigh,  '  I  never 
think  about  it  when  I  can  help  it.  I  suppose  we 
shall  all  just  stand  there  ! ' 

"  And  you  ? "  I  asked  of  the  next,  a  bright  girl 
with  snapping  eyes. 

" '  Do  you  want  me  to  talk  good,  or  tell  the 
truth  ? '  she  answered  me.  Having  been  given  to 
understand  that  she  was  not  expected  to  '  talk 
good'  in  my  class,  she  said,  with  an  approving, 
decided  nod  :  'Well,  then  !  I  don't  think  it's  going 
to  be  anything  nice  anyway.  No,  I  don't  !  I  told 
my  last  teacher  so,  and  she  looked  just  as  shocked, 
and  said  I  never  should  go  there  as  long  as  I 
felt  so.  That  made  me  mad,  and  I  told  her  I 
did  n't  see  but  I  should  be  as  well  off  in  one 
place  as  another,  except  for  the  fire.' 


148  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

"  A  silent  girl  in  the  corner  began  at  this 
point  to  look  interested.  '  I  always  supposed,' 
said  she,  'that  you  just  floated  round  in  heaven 
—  you  know  —  all  together — something  like  ju- 
jube paste  !' 

"  Whereupon  I  shut  the  question-book  entirely, 
and  took  the  talking  to  myself  for  a  while. 

" '  But  I  never  thought  it  was  anything  like 
that,'  interrupted  little  Clo,  presently,  her  cheeks 
flushed  with  excitement.  'Why,  I  should  like  to 
go,  if  it  is  like  that !  I  never  supposed  people 
talked,  unless  it  was  about  converting  people,  and 
saying  your  prayers,  and  all  that.' 

"  Now,  were  n't  those  ideas  *  alluring  and  com- 
forting for  young  girls  in  the  blossom  of  warm 
human  life  ?  They  were  trying  with  all  their  little 
hearts  to  'be  good,'  too,  some  of  them,  and  had 
all  of  them  been  to  church  and  Sunday  school 
all  their  lives.  Never,  never,  if  Jesus  Christ  had 
been  Teacher  and  Preacher  to  them,  would  He 
have  pictured  their  blessed  endless  years  with 
Him  in  such  bleak  colors.  They  are  not  the 
hues  of  his  Bible." 

*  Facts. 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  149 


XL 

July  1 6. 

WE  took  a  trip  to-day  to  East  Homer  for 
butter.  Neither  angels  nor  principalities 
could  convince  Phoebe  that  any  butter  but  "  Ste- 
phen David's  "  might,  could,  would,  or  should  be 
used  in  this  family.  So  to  Mr.  Stephen  David's, 
a  journey  of  four  miles,  I  meekly  betake  myself  at 
stated  periods  in  the  domestic  year,  burdened  with 
directions  about  firkins  and  half-firkins,  pounds  and 
half-pounds,  salt  and  no  salt,  churning  and  "  work- 
ing over  "  ;  some  of  which  I  remember  and  some 
of  which  I  forget,  and  to  all  of  which  Phoebe  con- 
siders me  sublimely  incapable  of  attending. 

The  afternoon  was  perfect,  and  we  took  things 
leisurely,  letting  the  reins  swing  from  the  hook, 
—  an  arrangement  to  which  Mr.  Tripp's  old  gray 
was  entirely  agreeable,  —  and,  leaning  back  against 
the  buggy-cushions,  wound  along  among  the  strong, 
sweet  pine-smells,  lazily  talking,  or  lazily  silent,  as 
the  spirit  moved,  and  as  only  two  people  who 
thoroughly  understand  and  like  each  other  can 
talk  or  be  silent. 


I5O  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

We  rode  home  by  Deacon  Quirk's,  and,  as  we 
jogged  by,  there  broke  upon  our  view  a  blooming 
vision  of  the  Deacon  himself,  at  work  in  his  po- 
tato-field with  his  son  and  heir,  who,  by  the  way, 
has  the  reputation  of  being  the  most  awkward 
fellow  in  the  township. 

The  amiable  church-officer,  having  caught  sight 
of  us,  left  his  work,  and  coming  up  to  the  fence 
"in  rustic  modesty  unscared,"  guiltless  of  coat  or 
vest,  his  calico  shirt-sleeves  rolled  up  to  his  huge 
brown  elbows,  and  his  dusty  straw  hat  flapping  in 
the  wind,  rapped  on  the  rails  with  his  hoe-handle 
as  a  sign  for  us  to  stop. 

"Are  we  in  a  hurry  ?  "  I  asked,  under  my  breath. 

"  O  no,"  said  Aunt  Winifred.  "  He  has  some- 
what to  say  unto  me,  I  see  by  his  eyes.  I  have 
been  expecting  it.  Let  us  hear  him  out.  Good 
afternoon,  Deacon  Quirk." 

"  Good  afternoon,  ma'am.     Pleasant  day  ? " 

She  assented  to  the  statement,  novel  as  it  was. 

"  A  very  pleasant  day,"  repeated  the  Deacon, 
looking  for  the  first  time  in  his  life,  to  my  knowl- 
edge, a  little  undecided  as  to  what  he  should  say 
next.  "  Remarkable  fine  day  for  riding.  In,  a 
hurry  ? " 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  1$! 

"Well,  not  especially.  Did  you  want  anything 
of  me  ? " 

"You  're  a  church-member,  aren't  you,  ma'am  ?" 
asked  the  Deacon,  abruptly. 

"I  am." 

"  Orthodox  ? " 

"  O  yes,"  with  a  smile.  "  You  .had  a  reason  for 
asking  ? " 

"Yes,  ma'am ;  I  had,  as  you  might  say,  a  reason 
for  asking." 

The  Deacon  laid  his  hoe  on  the  top  of  the 
fence,  and  his  arms  across  it,  and  pushed  his  hat 
on  the  back  of  his  head  in  a  becoming  and  argu- 
mentative manner. 

"  I  hope  you  don't  consider  that  I  'm  taking 
liberties  if  I  have  a  little  religious  conversation 
with  you,  Mrs.  Forceythe." 

"  It  is  no  offence  to  me  if  you  are,"  replied 
Mrs.  Forceythe,  with  a  twinkle  in  her  eye  ;  but 
both  twinkle  and  words  glanced  off  from  the 
Deacon. 

"  My  wife  was  telling  me  last  night,"  he  began, 
with  an  ominous  cough,  "  that  her  niece,  Clotildy 
Bentley,  —  Moses  Bentley's  daughter,  you  know, 
and  one  of  your  sentimental  girls  that  reads  poetry. 


152  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

and  is  easy  enough  led  away  by  vain  delusions  and 
false  doctrine,  —  was  under  your  charge  at  Sunday 
school.  Now  Clotildy  is  intimate  with  my  wife,  — 
who  is  her  aunt  on  her  mother's  side,  and  always 
tries  to  do  her  duty  by  her,  —  and  she  told  Mrs. 
Quirk  what  you  'd  been  a  saying  to  those  young 
minds  on  the  Sabbath." 

He  stopped,  and  observed  her  impressively,  as 
if  he  expected  to  see  the  guilty  blushes  of  ar- 
raigned heresy  covering  her  amused,  attentive  face. 

"  I  hope  you  will  pardon  me,  ma'am,  for  repeat- 
ing it,  but  Clotildy  said  that  you  told  her  she 
should  have  a  pianna  in  heaven.  A  pianna, 
ma'am  !" 

"  I  certainly  did,"  she  said,  quietly. 

"  You  did  ?  Well,  now,  I  did  n't  believe  it,  nor 
I  would  n't  believe  it,  till  I  'd  asked  you  !  I  thought 
it  warn't  more  than  fair  that  I  should  ask  you, 
before  repeating  it,  you  know.  It 's  none  of  my 
business,  Mrs.  Forceythe,  any  more  than  that  1 
take  a  general  interest  in  the  spiritooal  welfare  of 
the  youth  of  our  Sabbath  school  ;  but  I  am  very 
much  surprised  !  I  am  very  much  surprised  !  " 

"  I  am  surprised  that  you  should  be,  Deacon 
Quirk.  Do  you  believe  that  God  would  take  a 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  153 

poor  little  disappointed  girl  like  Clo,  who  has  been 
all  her  life  here  forbidden  the  enjoyment  of  a  per- 
fectly innocent  taste,  and  keep  her  in  His  happy 
heaven  eternal  years,  without  finding  means  to 
gratify  it  ?  I  don't." 

"  I  tell  Clotildy  I  don't  see  what  she  wants  of  a 
pianna-forte,"  observed  "  Clotildy 's  "  uncle,  senten- 
tiously.  "  She  can  go  to  singin'  school,  and  she  's 
been  in  the  choir  ever  since  I  have,  which  is  six 
years  come  Christmas.  Besides,  I  don't  think  it 's 
our  place  to  speckylate  on  the  mysteries  of  the 
heavenly  spere.  My  wife  told  her  that  she  must 
n't  believe  any  such  things  as  that,  which  were 
very  irreverent,  and  contrary  to  the  Scriptures,  and 
Clo  went  home  crying.  She  said,  '  It  was  so 
pretty  to  think  about.'  It  is  very  easy  to  impress 
these  delusions  of  fancy  on  the  young." 

"  Pray,  Deacon  Quirk,"  said  Aunt  Winifred,  lean- 
ing earnestly  forward  in  the  carriage,  "  will  you 
tell  me  what  there  is  '  irreverent '  or  '  unscriptural ' 
in  the  idea  that  there  will  be  instrumental  music 
in  heaven  ? " 

"  Well,"  replied  the  Deacon,  after  some  consid- 
eration, "  come  to  think  of  it,  there  will  be  harps, 
I  suppose.  Harpers  harping  with  their  harps  on 


154  THE     GATES    AJAR. 

the  sea  of  glass.  But  I  don't  believe  there  will 
be  any  piannas.  It 's  a  dreadfully  material  way  to 
talk  about  that  glorious  world,  to  my  thinking." 

"  If  you  could  show  me  wherein  a  harp  is  less 
'  material '  than  a  piano,  perhaps  I  should  agree 
with  you." 

Deacon  Quirk  looked  rather  nonplussed  for  a 
minute. 

"  What  do  you  suppose  people  will  do  in  heav- 
en?" she  asked  again. 

"  Glorify  God,"  said  the  Deacon,  promptly  recov- 
ering himself,  —  "  glorify  God,  and  sing  Worthy  the 
Lamb  !  We  shall  be  clothed  in  white  robes  with 
palms  in  our  hands,  and  bow  before  the  Great 
White  Throne.  We  shall  be  engaged  in  such 
employments  as  befit  sinless  creatures  in  a  spir- 
itooal  state  of  existence." 

"Now,  Deacon  Quirk,"  replied  Aunt  Winifred, 
looking  him  over  from  head  to  foot,  —  old  straw 
hat,  calico  shirt,  blue  overalls,  and  cowhide  boots, 
coarse,  work-worn  hands,  and  "narrow  forehead 
braided  tight,"  —  "just  imagine  yourself,  will  you? 
taken  out  of  this  life  this  minute,  as  you  stand 
here  in  your  potato-field  (the  Deacon  changed  his 
position  with  evident  uneasiness),  and  put  into 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  I$5 

another  life,  —  not  anybody  else,  but  yourself,  just 
as  you  left  this  spot,  —  and  do  you  honestly  think 
that  you  should  be  happy  to  go  and  put  on  a 
white  dress  and  stand'  still  in  a  choir  with  a  green 
branch  in  one  hand  and  a  singing-book  in  the 
other,  and  sing,  and  pray  and  never  do  anything 
but  sing  and  pray,  this  year,  next  year,  and  every 
year  forever  ? " 

"  We-ell,"  he  replied,  surprised  into  a  momentary 
flash  of  carnal  candor,  "  I  can't  say  that  I  should 
n't  wonder  for  a  minute,  maybe,  how  Abinadab 
would  ever  get  those  potatoes  hoed  without  me.  — 
Abinadab  !  go  back  to  your  work  !  " 

The  graceful  Abinadab  had  sauntered  up  during 
the  conversation,  and  was  listening,  hoe  in  hand 
and  mouth  open.  He  slunk  away  when  his  father 
spoke,  but  came  up  again  presently  on  tiptoe  when 
Aunt  Winifred  was  talking.  There  was  an  inter- 
ested, intelligent  look  about  his  square  and  pitifully 
embarrassed  face,  which  attracted  my  notice. 

"But  then,"  proceeded  the  Deacon,  re-enforced 
by  the  sudden  recollection  of  his  duties  as  a  father 
and  a  church-member,  "  that  could  n't  be  a  perma- 
nent state  of  feeling,  you  know.  I  expect  to  be 
transformed  by  the  renewing  of  my  mind  to  appre- 


156  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

ciate  the  glories  of  the  New  Jerusalem,  descending 
out  of  heaven  from  God.  That's  what  I  expect, 
marm.  Now  I  heerd  that  you  told  Mrs.  Bland,  or 
that  Mary  told  her,  or  that  she  heerd  it  someway, 
that  you  said  you  supposed  there  were  trees  and 
flowers  and  houses  and  such  in  heaven.  I  told  my 
wife  I  thought  your  deceased  husband  was  a  Con- 
gregational minister,  and  I  did  n't  believe  you  ever 
said  it  ;  but  that 's  the  rumor." 

Without  deeming  it  necessary  to  refer  to  her 
"deceased  husband,"  Aunt  Winifred  replied  that 
"  rumor  "  was  quite  right. 

"  Well !  "  said  the  Deacon,  with  severe  signifi- 
cance, "7  believe  in  a  spiritooal  heaven." 

I  looked  him  over  again,  —  hat,  hoe,  shirt,  and 
all  ;  scanned  his  obstinate  old  face  with  its  stupid, 
good  eyes  and  animal  mouth.  Then  I  glanced  at 
Aunt  Winifred  as  she  leaned  forward  in  the  after- 
noon light ;  the  white,  finely  cut  woman,  with  her 
serene  smile  and  rapt,  saintly  eyes, — every  inch 
of  her,  body  and  soul,  refined  not  only  by  birth  and 
training,  but  by  the  long  nearness  of  her  heart  to 
Christ. 

"  Of  the  earth,  earthy.  Of  the  heavens,  heav- 
enly." The  two  faces  sharpened  themselves  into 


THE     GATES     AJAR.  157 

two  types.  Which,  indeed,  was  the  better  able  to 
comprehend  a  "  spiritooal  heaven  "  ? 

"  It  is  distinctly  stated  in  the  Bible,  by  which 
I  suppose  we  shall  both  agree,"  said  Aunt  Wini- 
fred, gently,  "  that  there  shall  be  a  new  earth,  as 
well  as  new  heavens.  It  is  noticeable,  also,  that 
the  descriptions  of  heaven,  although  a  series  of 
metaphors,  are  yet  singularly  earthlike  and  tangible 
ones.  Are  flowers  and  skies  and  trees  less  '  spir- 
itual '  than  white  dresses  and  little  palm-branches  ? 
In  fact,  where  are  you  going  to  get  your  little 
branches  without  trees  ?  What  could  well  be  more 
suggestive  of  material  modes  of  living,  and  mate- 
rial industry,  than  a  city  marked  into  streets  and 
alleys,  paved  solidly  with  gold,  walled  in  and  barred 
with  gates  whose  jewels  are  named  and  counted, 
and  whose  very  length  and  breadth  are  measured 
with  a  celestial  surveyor's  chain  ?  " 

"  But  I  think  we  'd  ought  to  stick  to  what  the 
Bible  says,"  answered  the  Deacon,  stolidly.  "  If  it 
says  golden  cities  and  does  n't  say  flowers,  it  means 
cities  and  does  n't  mean  flowers.  I  dare  say  you  're 
a  good  woman,  Mrs.  Forceythe,  if  you  do  hold 
such  oncommon  doctrine,  and  I  don't  doubt  you 
mean  well  enough,  but  I  don't  think  that  we  ought 


}$8  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

to  trouble  ourselves  about  these  mysteries  of  a 
future  state,  /'m  willing  to  trust  them  to  God  !" 

The  evasion  of  a  fair  argument  by  this  self- 
sufficient  spasm  of  piety  was  more  than  I  could 
calmly  stand,  and  I  indulged  in  a  subdued  explo- 
sion, —  Auntie  says  it  sounded  like  Fourth  of  July 
crackers  touched  off  under  a  wet  barrel. 

"  Deacon  Quirk !  do  you  mean  to  imply  that 
Mrs.  Forceythe  does  not  trust  it  to  God  ?  The 
truth  is,  that  the  existence  of  such  a  world  as 
heaven  is  a  fact  from  which  you  shrink.  You 
know  you  do !  She  has  twenty  thoughts  about  it 
where  you  have  one  ;  yet  you  set  up  a  claim  to 
superior  spirituality ! " 

"Mary,  Mary,  you  are  a  little  excited,  I  fear. 
God  is  a  spirit,  and  they  that  worship  him  must 
worship  him  in  spirit  and  in  truth  !  " 

The  relevancy  of  this  last,  I  confess  myself  in- 
capable of  perceiving,  but  the  good  man  seemed 
to  be  convinced  that  he  had  made  a  point,  and 
we  rode  off  leaving  him  under  that  blissful  delu- 
sion. 

"  If  he  were  rit  a  good  man  ! "  I  sighed.  "  But 
he  is,  and  I  must  respect  him  for  it." 

"  Of  course  you  must ;  nor  is  he  to  blame  that 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  159 

he  is  narrow  and  rough.  I  should  scarcely  have 
argued  as  seriously  as  I  did  with  him,  but  that,  as 
I  fancy  him  to  be  a  representative  of  a  class,  I 
wanted  to  try  an  experiment.  Is  n't  he  amusing, 
though  ?  He  is"  precisely  one  of  Mr.  Stopford 
Brooke's  men  '  who  can  understand  nothing  which 
is  original.' " 

"  Are  there,  or  are  there  not,  more  of  such  men 
in  our  church  than  in  others  ? " 

"  Not  more  proportionately  to  numbers.  But  I 
would  not  have  them  thinned  out.  The  better  we 
do  Christ's  work,  the  more  of  uneducated,  neg- 
lected, or  debased  mind  will  be  drawn  to  try  and 
serve  Him  with  us.  He  sought  out  the  lame,  the 
halt,  the  blind,  the  stupid,  the  crotchety,  the  rough, 
as  well  as  the  equable,  the  intelligent,  the  refined. 
Untrained  Christians  in  any  sect  will  always  have 
their  eccentricities  and  their  littlenesses,  at  which 
the  silken  judgment  of  high  places,  where  the  Car- 
penter's Son  would  be  a  strange  guest,  will  sneer. 
That  never  troubles  me.  It  only  raises  the  ques' 
tion  in  my  mind  whether  cultivated  Christians  gen- 
erally are  sufficiently  cultivators,  scattering  their 
golden  gifts  on  wayside  ground." 

"  Now  take  Degcon   Quirk,"  I  suggested,  when 


IC5O  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

we  had  ridden  along  a  little  way  under  the  low, 
green  arches  of  the  elms,  "and  put  him  into  heaven 
as  you  proposed,  just  as  he  is,  and  what  is  he  going 
to  do  with  himself?  He  can  dig  potatoes  and  sell 
them  without  cheating,  and  give  generously  of  their 
proceeds  to  foreign  missions  ;  but  take  away  his 
potatoes,  and  what  would  become  of  him  ?  I  don't 
know  a  human  being  more  incapacitated  to  live 
in  such  a  heaven  as  he  believes  in." 

"  Very  true,  and  a  good,  common-sense  argu- 
ment against  such  a  heaven.  I  don't  profess  to 
surmise  what  will  be  found  for  him  to  do,  beyond 
this,  —  that  it  will  be  some  very  palpable  work  that 
he  can  understand.  How  do  we  know  that  he 
would  not  be  appointed  guardian  of  his  poor  son 
here,  to  whom  I  suspect  he  has  not  been  all  that 
father  might  be  in  this  life,  and  that  he  would  not 
have  his  body  as  well  as  his  soul  to  look  after,  his 
farm  as  well  as  his  prayers  ?  to  him  might  be  com- 
mitted the  charge  of  the  dews  and  the  rains  and 
the  hundred  unseen  influences  that  are  at  work 
on  this  very  potato-field." 

"  But  when  his  son  has  gone  in  his  turn,  and  we 
have  all  gone,  and  there  are  no  more  potato-fields  ? 
An  Eternity  remains." 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  l6l 

"  You  don't  know  that  there  would  n't  be  any 
potato-fields  ;  there  may  be  some  kind  of  agricul- 
tural employments  even  then.  To  whomsoever  a 
talent  is  given,  it  will  be  given  him  wherewith  to 
use  it.  Besides,  by  that  time  the  good  Deacon 
will  be  immensely  changed.  I  suppose  that  the 
simple  transition  of  death,  which  rids  him  of  sin 
and  of  grossness,  will  not  only  wonderfully  refine 
him,  but  will  have  its  effect  upon  his  intellect." 

"  If  a  talent  is  given,  use  will  be  found  for  it  ? 
Tell  me  some  more  about  that." 

"  I  fancy  many  things  about  it ;  but  of  course 
can  feel  sure  of  only  the  foundation  principle.  This 
life  is  a  great  school-house.  The  wise  Teacher 
trains  in  us  such  gifts  as,  if  we  graduate  honor- 
ably, will  be  of  most  service  in  the  perfect  man- 
hood and  womanhood  that  come  after.  He  sees,  as 
we' do  not,  that  a  power  is  sometimes  best  trained 
by  repression.  '  We  do  not  always  lose  an  advan- 
tage when  we  dispense  with  it,'  Goethe  says.  But 
the  suffocated  lives,  like  little  Clo's  there,  make  my 
heart  ache  sometimes.  I  take  comfort  in  thinking 
how  they  will  bud  and  blossom  up  in  the  air,  by 
and  by.  There  are  a  great  many  of  them.  We 
tread  them  underfoot  in  our  careless  stepping  now 


l62  THE     GATES    AJAR. 

and  then,  and  do  not  see  that  they  have  not  the 
elasticity  to  rise  from  our  touch.  '  Heaven  may  be 
a  place  for  those  who  failed  on  earth/  the  Country 
Parson  says." 

"  Then  there  will  be  air  enough  for  all  ? " 
"  For  all ;  for  those  who  have  had  a  little  bloom 
in  this  world,  as  well.  I  suppose  the  artist  will 
paint  his  pictures,  the  poet  sing  his  happy  songs ; 
the  orator  and  author  will  not  find  their  talents 
hidden  in  the  eternal  darkness  of  a  grave  ;  the 
sculptor  will  use  his  beautiful  gift  in  the  moulding 
of  some  heavenly  Carrara  ;  *  as  well  the  singer  as 
the  player  on  instruments  shall  be  there.'  Christ 
said  a  thing  that  has  grown  on  me  with  new  mean- 
ings lately,  — '  He  that  loseth  his  life  for  my  sake 
shall  find  it.'  It,  you  see,  —  not  another  man's 
life,  not  a  strange  compound  of  powers  and  pleas- 
ures, but  his  own  familiar  aspirations.  So  we  shall 
best  'glorify  God,'  not  less  there  than  here,  by  doing 
it  in  the  peculiar  way  that  He  himself  marked  out 
for  us.  But  —  ah,  Mary,  you  see  it  is  only  the  life 
'lost'  for  His  sake  that  shall  be  so  beautifully  found. 
A  great  man  never  goes  to  heaven  because  he  is 
great.  He  must  go,  as  the  meanest  of  his  fellow- 
sinners  go,  with  face  towards  Calvary,  and  every 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  163 

golden  treasure  used  for  love  of  Him  who  showed 
him  how." 

"  What  would  the  old  Pagans  —  and  modern 
ones,  too,  for  that  matter  —  say  to  that  ?  Was  n't  it 
Tacitus  who  announced  it  as  his  belief,  that  im- 
mortality was  granted  as  a  special  gift  to  a  few 
superior  minds  ?  For  the  people  who  persisted  in 
making  up  the  rest  of  the  world,  poor  things  !  as  it 
could  be  of  little  consequence  what  became  of  them, 
they  might  die  as  the  brute  dieth." 

"  It  seems  an  unbearable  thing  to  me  sometimes," 
she  went  on,  "  the  wreck  of  a  gifted  soul.  A  man 
who  can  be,  if  he  chooses,  as  much  better  and  hap- 
pier than  the  rest  of  us  as  the  ocean  reflects  more 
sky  than  a  mill-pond,  must  also  be,  if  he  chooses, 
more  wicked  and  more  miserable.  It  takes  longer 
to  reach  sea-shells  than  river-pebbles.  I  am  com- 
pelled to  think,  also,  that  intellectual  rank  must  in 
heaven  bear  some  proportion  to  goodness.  There 
are  last  and  there  are  first  that  shall  have  changed 
places.  As  the  tree  falleth,  there  shall  it  lie,  and 
with  that  amount  of  holiness  of  which  a  man  leaves 
this  life  the  possessor,  he  must  start  in  another.  I 
have  seen  great  thinkers, '  foremost  men '  in  science, 
in  theology,  in  the  arts,  who,  I  solemnly  believe, 


164  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

will  turn  aside  in  heaven,  —  and  will  turn  humbly 
and  heartily,  —  to  let  certain  day-laborers  and  pau- 
pers whom  I  have  known  go  up  before  them  as  kings 
and  priests  unto  God. " 

"  I  believe  that.  But  I  was  going  to  ask,  —  for 
poor  creatures  like  your  respected  niece,  who  has  n't 
a  talent,  nor  even  a  single  absorbing  taste,  for  one 
thing  above  another  thing,  —  what  shall  she  do  ?  " 

"  Whatever  she  liketh  best ;  something  very  use- 
ful, my  dear,  don't  be  afraid,  and  very  pleasant. 
Something,  too,  for  which  this  life  has  fitted  you ; 
though  you  may  not  understand  how  that  can  be, 
better  than  did  poor  Heine  on  his  '  matrazzen- 
gruft,'  reading  all  the  books  that  treated  of  his  dis- 
ease. '  But  what  good  this  reading  is  to  do  me  I 
don't  know/  he  said,  '  except  that  it  will  qualify  me 
to  give  lectures  in  heaven  on  the  ignorance  of  doc- 
tors on  earth  about  diseases  of  the  spinal  marrow." 

"  I  don't  know  how  many  times  I  have  thought 
of —  I  believe  it  was  the  poet  Gray,  who  said  that 
his  idea  of  heaven  was  to  lie  on  the  sofa  and  read 
novels.  That  touches  the  lazy  part  of  us,  though." 

"  Yes,  they  will  be  the  active,  outgoing,  generous 
elements  of  our  nature  that  will  be  brought  into 
use  then,  rather  than  the  self-centred  and  dreamy 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  l6$ 

ones.  Though  I  suppose  that  we  shall  read  in 
heaven,  —  being  influenced  to  be  better  and  nobler 
by  good  and  noble  teachers  of  the  pen,  not  less 
there  than  here." 

"  O  think  of  it  ?  To  have  books,  and  music,  — 
and  pictures  ? " 

"All  that  Art,  'the  handmaid  of  the  Lord,'  can 
do  for  us,  I  have  no  doubt  will  be  done.  Eternity 
will  never  become  monotonous.  Variety  without 
end,  charms  unnumbered  within  charms,  will  be  de- 
vised by  Infinite  ingenuity  to  minister  to  our  delight. 
Perhaps,  —  this  is  just  my  fancying,  —  perhaps  there 
will  be  whole  planets  turned  into  galleries  of  art, 
over  which  we  may  wander  at  will  ;  or  into  orches- 
tral halls  where  the  highest  possibilities  of  music 
will  be  realized  to  singer  and  to  hearer.  Do  you 
know,  I  have  sometimes  had  a  flitting  notion  that 
music  would  be  the  language  of  heaven  ?  It  cer- 
tainly differs  in  some  indescribable  manner  from  the 
other  arts.  We  have  most  of  us  felt  it  in  our  different 
ways.  It  always  seems  to  me  like  the  cry  of  a  great, 
sad  life  dragged  to  use  in  this  world  against  its  will. 
Pictures  and  statues  and  poems  fit  themselves  to 
their  work  more  contentedly.  Symphony  and  song 
struggle  in  fetters.  That  sense  of  conflict  is  not 


l66  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

good  for  me.  It  is  quite  as  likely  to  harm  as  to 
help.  Then  perhaps  the  mysteries  of  sidereal  sys- 
tems will  be  spread  out  like  a  child's  map  before  us. 
Perhaps  we  shall  take  journeys  to  Jupiter  and  to 
Saturn  and  to  the  glittering  haze  of  nebulae,  and  to 
the  site  of  ruined  worlds  whose  '  extinct  light  is  yet 
travelling  through  space.'  Occupation  for  explorers 
there,  you  see  !  " 

"  You  make  me  say  with  little  Clo,  '  O,  why,  I 
want  to  go  ! '  every  time  I  hear  you  talk.  But  there 
is  one  thing, —  you  spoke  of  families  living  together." 

"  Yes." 

"And  you  spoke  of — your  husband.  But  the 
Bible—" 

"  Says  there  shall  be  no  marrying  nor  giving  in 
marriage.  I  know  that.  Nor  will  there  be  such 
marrying  or  giving  in  marriage  as  there  is  in  a 
world  like  this.  Christ  expressly  goes  on  to 
state,  that  we  shall  be  as  the  angels  in  heaven. 
How  do  we  know  what  heavenly  unions  of  heart 
with  heart  exist  among  the  angels  ?  It  leaves  me 
margin  enough  to  live  and  be  happy  with  John 
forever,  and  it  holds  many  possibilities  for  the 
settlement  of  all  perplexing  questions  brought 
about  by  the  relations  of  this  world.  It  is  of 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  167 

no  use  to  talk  much  about  them.  But  it  is  on 
that  very  verse  that  I  found  my  unshaken  belief 
that  they  will  be  smoothed  out  in  some  natural  and 
happy  way,  with  which  each  one  shall  be  content." 

"  But  O,  there  is  a  great  gulf  fixed  ;  and  on  one 
side  one,  and  on  the  other  another,  and  they  loved 
each  other." 

Her  face  paled, —  it  always  pales,  I  notice,  at  the 
mention  of  this  mystery,  —  but  her  eyes  never  lost 
by  a  shade  their  steadfast  trust. 

"  Mary,  don't  question  me  about  that.  That  be- 
longs to  the  unutterable  things.  God  will  take  care 
of  it.  I  think  I  could  leave  it  to  Him  even  if  he 
brought  it  for  me  myself  to  face.  I  feel  sure  that 
He  will  make  it  all  come  out  right.  Perhaps  He 
will  be  so  dear  to  us,  that  we  could  not  love  any  one 
who  hated  Him.  In  some  way  the  void  must  be 
filled,  for  He  shall  wipe  away  tears.  But  it  seems  to 
me  that  the  only  thought  in  which  there  can  be  any 
rest,  and  in  that  there  can,  is  this  :  that  Christ,  who 
loves  us  even  as  His  Father  loves  Him,  can  be  happy 
in  spite  of  the  existence  of  a  hell.  If  it  is  possible 
to  Him,  surely  He  can  make  it  possible  to  us." 

"  Two  things  that  He  has  taught  us,"  she  said 
after  a  silence,  "  give  me  beautiful  assurance  that 


168  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

none  of  these  dreams  with  which  I  help  myself  can 
be  beyond  His  intention  to  fulfil.  One  is,  that  eye 
hath  not  seen  it,  nor  ear  heard  it,  nor  the  heart  con- 
ceived it, —  this  lavishness  of  reward  which  He  is 
keeping  for  us.  Another  is,  that  '  I  shall  be  satis- 
fied when  I  awake.' " 

"  With  his  likeness." 

"  With  his  likeness.  And  about  that  I  have  other 
things  to  say." 

But  Old  Gray  stopped  at  the  gate  and  Phoebe 
was  watching  for  her  butter,  and  it  was  no  time  to 
say  them  then. 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  169 


XII. 

July  22. 

AUNT  WINIFRED  has  connected  herself  with 
our  church.  I  think  it  was  rather  hard  for 
her,  breaking  the  last  tie  that  bound  her  to  her 
husband's  people  ;  but  she  had  a  feeling,  that,  if  her 
work  is  to  be  done  and  her  days  ended  here,  she  had 
better  take  up  all  such  little  threads  of  influence  to 
make  herself  one  with  us. 

25th. 

To-day  what  should  Deacon  Quirk  do  but  make 
a  solemn  call  on  Mrs.  Forceythe,  for  the  purpose  of 
asking  —  and  this  with  a  hint  that  he  wished  he  had 
asked  before  she  became  a  member  of  the  Homer 
First  Congregational  Church  —  whether  there  were 
truth  in  the  rumors,  now  rife  about  town,  that  she 
was  a  Swedenborgian  ! 

Aunt  Winifred  broke  out  laughing,  and  laughed 
merrily.  The  Deacon  frowned. 

"  I  used  to  fancy  that  I  believed  in  Swedenborg," 
she  said,  as  soon  as  she  could  sober  down  a  little. 

The  Deacon  pricked  up  his  ears,  with  visions  of 
8 


I/O  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

excommunications  and  councils  reflected  on  every 
feature. 

"  Until  I  read  his  books,"  she  finished. 

"  Oh ! "  said  the  Deacon.  He  waited  for  more, 
but  she  seemed  to  consider  the  conversation  at  an 
end. 

"So  then  you — if  I  understand  —  are  not  a 
Swedenborgian,  ma'am  ?" 

"  If  I  were,  I  certainly  should  have  had  no  in- 
ducement to  join  myself  to  your  church,"  she  re- 
plied, with  gentle  dignity.  "  I  believe,  with  all  my 
heart,  in  the  same  Bible  and  the  same  creed  that 
you  believe  in,  Deacon  Quirk." 

"  And  you  live  your  creed,  which  all  such  genial 
Christians  do  not  find  it  necessary  to  do,"  I  thought, 
as  the  Deacon  in  some  perplexity  took  his  depart- 
ure, and  she  returned  with  a  smile  to  her  sewing. 

I  suppose  the  call  came  about  in  this  way.  We 
had  the  sewing-circle  here  last  week,  and  just  be- 
fore the  lamps  were  lighted,  and  when  people  had 
dropped  their  work  to  group  and  talk  in  the  cor- 
ners, Meta  Tripp  came  up  with  one  or  two  other 
girls  to  Aunt  Winifred,  and  begged  "  to  hear  some 
of  those  queer  things  people  said  she  believed  about 
heaven."  Auntie  is  never  obtrusive  with  her  views 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  I/I 

on  this  or  any  other  matter,  but  being  thus  urged, 
she  answered  a  few  questions  that  they  put  to  her, 
to  the  extreme  scandal  of  one  or  two  old  ladies, 
and  the  secret  delight  of  the  rest. 

"Well,"  said  little  Mrs.  Bland,  squeezing  and 
kissing  her  youngest,  who  was  at  that  moment 
vigorously  employed  in  sticking  very  long  darning- 
needles  into  his  mother's  waterfall,  "  I  hope  there  '11 
be  a  great  many  babies  there.  I  should  be  per- 
fectly happy  if  I  always  could  have  babies  to  play 
with!" 

The  look  that  Aunt  Winifred  shot  over  at  me 
was  worth  seeing. 

She  merely  replied,  however,  that  she  supposed 
all  our  "  highest  aspirations,"  —  with  an  indescriba- 
ble accent  to  which  Mrs.  Bland  was  safely  deaf,  — 
if  good  ones,  would  be  realized ;  and  added,  laugh- 
ing, that  Swedenborg  said  that  the  babies  in  heaven 
— who  outnumber  the  grown  people — will  be  given 
into  the  charge  of  those  women  especially  fond  of 
them. 

"  Swedenborg  is  suggestive,  even  if  you  can't  ac- 
cept what  seem  to  the  uninitiated  to  be  his  natural 
impossibilities,"  she  said,  after  we  had  discussed 
Deacon  Quirk  awhile.  "  He  says  a  pretty  thing, 


1/2  THE     GATES    AJAR. 

too,  occasionally.  Did  I  ever  read  you  about  the 
houses  ?"  She  had  not,  and  I  wished  to  hear,  so  she 
found  the  book  on  Heaven  and  Hell,  and  read  :  — 

"As  often  as  I  have  spoken  with  the  angels 
mouth  to  mouth,  so  often  I  have  been  with  them 
in  their  habitations :  their  habitations  are  altogether 
like  the  habitations  on  earth  which  are  called 
houses,  but  more  beautiful ;  in  them  are  parlors, 
rooms,  and  chambers  in  great  numbers ;  there  are 
also  courts,  and  round  about  are  gardens,  shrub- 
beries, and  fields.  Palaces  of  heaven  have  been 
seen  which  were  so  magnificent  that  they  could 
not  be  described  ;  above,  they  glittered  as  if  they 
were  of  pure  gold,  and  below,  as  if  they  were  of 
precious  stones ;  one  palace  was  more  splendid  than 
another ;  within,  it  was  the  same  ;  the  rooms  were 
ornamented  with  such  decorations  as  neither  words 
nor  sciences  are  sufficient  to  describe.  On  the  side 
which  looked  to  the  south  there  were  paradises, 
where  all  things  in  like  manner  glittered,  and  in 
some  places  the  leaves  were  as  of  silver,  and  the 
fruits  as  of  gold  ;  and  the  flowers  on  their  beds 
presented  by  colors  as  it  were  rainbows  ;  at  the 
boundaries  again  were  palaces,  in  which  the  view 
terminated." 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  1/3 

Aunt  Winifred  says  that  our  hymns,  taken  all 
together,  contain  the  worst  and  the  best  pictures 
of  heaven  that  we  have  in  any  branch  of  literature. 

"  It  seems  to  me  incredible,"  she  says,  "  that  the 
Christian  Church  should  have  allowed  that  beau- 
tiful 'Jerusalem'  in  its  hymnology  so  long,  with  the 
ghastly  couplet,  — 

'  Where  congregations  ne'er  break  up, 
And  Sabbaths  have  no  end.' 

The  dullest  preachers  are  sure  to  give  it  out,  and 
that  when  there  are  the  greatest  number  of  rest- 
less children  wondering  when  it  will  be  time  to  go 
home.  It  is  only  within  ten  years  that  modern 
hymn-books  have  altered  it,  returning  in  part  to 
the  original. 

"  I  do  not  think  we  have  chosen  the  best  parts 
of  that  hymn  for  our  'service  of  song.'  You  never 
read  the  whole  of  it  ?  You  don't  know  how  pretty 
it  is !  It  is  a  relief  from  the  customary  palms  and 
choirs.  One's  whole  heart  is  glad  of  the  outlet  of 
its  sweet  refrain,  — 

1  Would  God  that  I  were  there  ! ' 

before  one  has  half  read  it.  You  are  quite  ready 
to  believe  that 


174  THE    GATES    AJAR. 


'  There  is  no  hunger,  heat,  nor  cold, 
But  pleasure  every  way,1 


Listen  to  this : 


'  Thy  houses  are  of  ivory, 

Thy  windows  crystal  clear, 
Thy  tiles  are  made  of  beaten  gold  ; 
O  God,  that  I  were  there  ! 

*  We  that  are  here  in  banishment 
Continually  do  moan. 

'  Our  sweet  is  mixed  with  bitter  gall, 

Our  pleasure  is  but  pain, 
Our  joys  scarce  last  the  looking  on. 
Our  sorrows  still  remain. 

'  But  there  they  live  in  such  delight, 

Such  pleasure  and  such  play, 
As  that  to  them  a  thousand  years 
Doth  seem  as  yesterday.' 


And  this :  — 


'  Thy  gardens  and  thy  gallant  walks 

Continually  are  green ; 
There  grow  such  sweet  and  pleasant  flowers 
As  nowhere  else  are  seen. 

'  There  cinnamon,  there  sugar  grows, 

There  nard  and  balm  abound, 
What  tongue  can  tell,  or  heart  conceive 
The  joys  that  there  are  found  ? 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  1/5 

'Quite  through  the  streets,  with  silver  sound, 

The  flood  of  life  doth  flow, 
Upon  whose  banks,  on  every  side, 
The  wood  of  life  doth  grow.' 

I  tell  you  we  may  learn  something  from  that 
grand  old  Catholic  singer.  He  is  far  nearer  to 
the  Bible  than  the  innovators  on  his  MSS.  Do 
you  not  notice  how  like  his  images  are  to  the 
inspired  ones,  and  yet  how  pleasant  and  natural 
is  the  effect  of  the  entire  poem  ? 

"There  is  nobody  like  Bonar,  though,  to  sing 
about  heaven.  There  is  one  of  his,  '  We  shall 
meet  and  rest/  —  do  you  know  it? 

I  shook  my  head,  and  knelt  down  beside  her 
and  watched  her  face,  —  it  was  quite  unconscious 
of  me,  the  musing  face,  —  while  she  repeated 
dreamily :  — 

"  Where  the  faded  flower  shall  freshen,  — 

Freshen  nevermore  to  fade  ; 
Where  the  shaded  sky  shall  brighten, — 

Brighten  nevermore  to  shade ; 
Where  the  sun-blaze  never  scorches ; 

Where  the  star-beams  cease  to  chill ; 
Where  no  tempest  stirs  the  echoes 

Of  the  wood  or  wave  or  hill ;  .  .  .  . 
Where  no  shadow  shall  bewilder ; 

Where  life's  vain  parade  is  o'er ; 


176  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

Where  the  sleep  of  sin  is  broken, 

And  the  dreamer  dreams  no  more ; 
Where  the  bond  is  never  severed,  — 

Partings,  claspings,  sob  and  moan, 
Midnight  waking,  twilight  weeping, 

Heavy  noontide,  —  all  are  done ; 
Where  the  child  has  found  its  mother; 

Where  the  mother  finds  the  child ; 
Where  dear  families  are  gathered, 

That  were  scattered  on  the  wild ;  .  .  .  » 
Where  the  hidden  wound  is  healed ; 

Where  the  blighted  life  reblooms ; 
Where  the  smitten  heart  the  freshness 

Of  its  buoyant  youth  resumes  ;  .  .  .  . 
Where  we  find  the  joy  of  loving, 

As  we  never  loved  before,  — 
Loving  on,  unchilled,  unhindered, 

Loving  once,  forevermore."  .... 

30th. 

Aunt  Winifred  was  weeding  her  day-lilies  this 
morning,  when  the  gate  creaked  timidly,  and  then 
swung  noisily,  and  in  walked  Abinadab  Quirk, 
with  a  bouquet  of  China  pinks  in  the  button-hole 
of  his  green-gray  linen  coat.  He  had  taken  evi- 
dent pains  to  smarten  himself  up  a  little,  for  his 
hair  was  combed  into  two  horizontal  dabs  over 
his  ears,  and  the  green-gray  coat  and  blue-checked 
shirt-sleeves  were  quite  clean  ;  but  he  certainly  is 


THE     GATES     AJAR. 

the  most  uncouth  specimen  of  six  feet  five  that 
it  has  ever  been  my  privilege  to  behold.  I  feel 
sorry  for  him,  though.  I  heard  Meta  Tripp 
laughing  at  him  in  Sunday  school  the  other  day, 
— "  Quadrangular  Quirk,"  she  called  him,  a  little 
too  loud,  and  the  poor  fellow  heard  her.  He  half 
turned,  blushing  fiercely ;  then  slunk  down  in  his 
corner  with  as  pitiable  a  look  as  is  often  seen 
upon  a  man's  face. 

He  came  up  to  Auntie  awkwardly,  —  a  part  of 
the  scene  I  saw  from  the  window,  and  the  rest 
she  told  me,  —  head  hanging,  and  the  tiny  bou- 
quet held  out. 

"  Clo  sent  these  to  you,"  he  stammered  out,  — 
"  my  cousin  Clo.  I  was  coming  'long,  and  she 
thought,  you  know,  —  she  'd  get  me,  you  see,  to  — 
to  —  that  is,  to  —  bring  them.  She  sent  her  — 
that  is  —  let  me  see.  She  sent  her  respect  —  ful 
—  respectful  —  no,  her  love  ;  that  was  it.  She 
sent  her  love  'long  with  "em." 

Mrs.  Forceythe  dropped  her  weeds,  and  held 
out  her  white,  shapely  hands,  wet  with  the  heavy 
clew,  to  take  the  flowers. 

"  O,  thank  you  !  Clo  knows  my  fancy  for  pinks. 
How  kind  in  you  to  bring  them  !  Won't  you  sit 

8*  L 


1/8  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

down  a  few  moments  ?  I  was  just  going  to  rest 
a  little.  Do  you  like  flowers  ? " 

Abinadab  eyed  the  white  hands,  as  his  huge 
fingers  just  touched  them,  with  a  sort  of  awe  ;  and, 
sighing,  sat  down  on  the  very  edge  of  the  garden 
bench  beside  her.  After  a  singular  variety  of 
efforts  to  take  the  most  uncomfortable  position 
of  which  he  was  capable,  he  succeeded  to  his  sat- 
isfaction, and,  growing  then  somewhat  more  at  his 
ease,  answered  her  question. 

"Flowers  are  such  gassy  things.  They  just 
blow  out  and  that 's  the  end  of  'em.  7  like  ma- 
chine-shops best." 

"  Ah !  well,  that  is  a  very  useful  liking.  Do 
you  ever  invent  machinery  yourself?" 

"Sometimes,"  said  Abinadab,  with  a  bashful 
smile.  "  There  's  a  little  improvement  of  mine  for 
carpet-sweepers  up  before  the  patent-office  now. 
Don't  know  whether  they  '11  run  it  through. 
Some  of  the  chaps  I  saw  in  Boston  told  me 
they  thought  they  would  do  't  in  time  ;  it  takes 
an  awful  sight  of  time.  I  'm  alwers  fussing  over 
something  of  the  kind  ;  alwers  did,  sence  I  was  a 
baby ;  had  my  little  wind-mills  and  carts  and 
things  ;  used  to  sell  'em  to  the  other  young  uns. 


THE    GATES    AJAR. 

Father  don't  like  it.  He  wants  me  to  stick  to 
the  farm.  I  don't  like  farming.  I  feel  like  a  fish 
out  of  water.  —  Mrs.  Forceythe,  marm  !  " 

He  turned  on  her  with  an  abrupt  change  of 
tone,  so  funny  that  she  could  with  difficulty  re- 
tain her  gravity. 

"  I  heard  you  saying  a  sight  of  queer  -things  the 
other  day  about  heaven.  Clo,  she 's  been  telling  me 
a  sight  more.  Now,  /  never  believed  in  heaven ! " 

"Why?" 

"  Because  I  don't  believe,"  said  the  poor  fellow, 
with  sullen  decision,  "  that  a  benevolent  God  ever 
would  ha'  made  sech  a  derned  awkward  chap  as 
I  am!" 

Aunt  Winifred  replied  by  stepping  into  the  house, 
and  bringing  out  a  fine  photograph  of  one  of  the 
best  of  the  St.  Georges,  —  a  rapt,  yet  very  manly 
face,  in  which  the  saint  and  the  hero  are  wonder- 
fully blended.  "I  suppose,"  she  said,  putting  it 
into  his  hands,  "  that  if  you  should  go  to  heaven, 
you  would  be  as  much  fairer  than  that  picture  as 
that  picture  is  fairer  than  you  are  now." 

"  No  !  Why,  would  I,  though  ?  Jim-miny !  Why, 
it  would  be  worth  going  for,  would  n't  it  ? " 

The  words  were  no  less  reverently  spoken  than 


ISO  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

the  vague  rhapsodies  of  his  father ;  for  the  sullen- 
ness  left  his  face,  and  his  eyes — which  are  pleasant, 
and  not  unmanly,  when  one  fairly  sees  them  — 
sparkled  softly,  like  a  child's. 

"  Make  it  all  up  there,  maybe  ? "  musing,  —  "  the 
girls  laughing  at  you  all  your  life,  and  all  ?  That 
would  be  the  bigger  heft  of  the  two  then,  would  n't 
it?  for  they  say  there  ain't  any  end  to  things  up 
there.  Why,  so  it  might  be  fair  in  Him  after  all ; 
more  'n  fair,  perhaps.  See  here,  Mrs.  Forceythe, 
I  'm  not  a  church-member,  you  know,  and  father, 
he  's  dreadful  troubled  about  me  ;  prays  over  me 
like  a  span  of  ministers,  the  old  gentleman  does, 
every  Sunday  night.  Now,  I  don't  want  to  go  to 
the  other  place  any  more  than  the  next  man,  and 
I  've  had  my  times,  too,  of  thinking  I  'd  keep  steady 
and  say  my  prayers  reg'lar,  —  it  makes  a  chap  feel 
on  a  sight  better  terms  with  himself,  —  but  I  don't 
see  how  7'm  going  to  wear  white  frocks  and  stand 
up  in  a  choir,  —  never  could  sing  no  more  'n  a  frog 
with  a  cold  in  his  head,  —  it  tires  me  more  now, 
honest,  to  think  of  it,  than  it  does  to  do  a  week's 
mowing.  Look  at  me  !  Do  you  s'pose  I  'm  fit  for 
it  ?  Father,  he  's  always  talking  about  the  thrones, 
and  the  wings,  and  the  praises,  and  the  palms,  and 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  l8l 

having  new  names  in  your  foreheads  (should  n't 
object  to  that,  though,  by  any  means),  till  he  drives 
me  into  the  tool-house,  or  off  on  a  spree.  I  tell 
him  if  God  ain't  got  a  place  where  chaps  like  me 
can  do  something  He  's  fitted  'em  to  do  in  this 
world,  there  's  no  use  thinking  about  it  anyhow." 

So  Auntie  took  the  honest  fellow  into  her  most 
earnest  thought  for  half  an  hour,  and  argued,  and 
suggested,  and  reproved,  and  helped  him,  as  only 
she  could  do  ;  and  at  the  end  of  it  seemed  to  have 
worked  into  his  mind  some  distinct  and  not  un- 
welcome ideas  of  what  a  Christ-like  life  must  mean 
to  him,  and  of  the  coming  heaven  which  is  so  much 
more  real  to  her  than  any  life  outside  of  it. 

"  And  then,"  she  told  him,  "  I  imagine  that  your 
fancy  for  machinery  will  be  employed  in  some  way. 
Perhaps  you  will  do  a  great  deal  more  successful 
inventing  there  than  you  ever  will  here." 

"  You  don't  say  so  ! "  said  radiant  Abinadab. 

"  God  will  give  you  something  to  do,  certainly, 
and  something  that  you  will  like." 

"  I  might  turn  it  to  some  religious  purpose,  you 
know  !  "  said  Abinadab,  looking  bright.  "  Perhaps 
I  could  help  'em  build  a  church,  or  hist  some  of 
their  pearl  gates,  or  something  like ! " 


182  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

Upon  that  he  said  that  it  was  time  to  be  at  home 
and  see  to  the  oxen,  and  shambled  awkwardly  away. 

Clo  told  us  this  afternoon  that  he  begged  the 
errand  and  the  flowers  from  her.  She  says :  "  'Bin 
thinks  there  never  was  anybody  like  you,  Mrs. 
Forceythe,  and  'Bin  is  n't  the  t>nly  one,  either." 
At  which  Mrs.  Forceythe  smiles  absently,  think- 
ing —  I  wonder  of  what 

Monday  night 

I  saw  as  funny  and  as  pretty  a  bit  of  a  drama 
this  afternoon  as  I  have  seen  for  a  long  time. 

Faith  had  been  rolling  out  in  the  hot  hay  ever 
since  three  o'clock,  with  one  of  the  little  Elands, 
and  when  the  shadows  grew  long  they  came  in  with 
flushed  cheeks  and  tumbled  hair,  to  rest  and  cool 
upon  the  door-steps.  I  was  sitting  in  the  parlor, 
sewing  energetically  on  some  sun-bonnets  for  some 
of  Aunt  Winifred's  people  down  town,  —  I  found 
the  heat  to  be  more  bearable  if  I  kept  busy,  —  and 
could  see,  unseen,  all  the  little  tableaux  into  which 
the  two  children  grouped  themselves  ;  a  new  one 
every  instant  ;  in  the  shadow  now,  —  now  in  a 
quiver  of  golden  glow  ;  the  wind  tossing  their  hair 
about,  and  their  chatter  chiming  down  the  hall  like 
bells. 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  183 

"  O,  what  a  funny  little  sunset  there  's  going  to 
be  behind  the  maple-tree,"  said  the  blond-haired 
Bland,  in  a  pause. 

"Funny  enough,"  observed  Faith,  with  her  su- 
perior smile,  "but  it's  going  to  be  a  great  deal 
funnier  up  in  heaven,  I  tell  you,  Molly  Bland." 

"  Funny  in  heaven  ?  Why,  Faith  ! "  Molly 
drew 'herself  up  with  a  religious  air,  and  looked 
the  image  of  her  father. 

"  Yes,  to  be  sure.  I  'm  going  to  have  some  little 
pink  blocks  made  out  of  it  when  I  go ;  pink  and 
yellow  and  green  and  purple  and  —  O,  so  many 
blocks  !  I  'm  going  to  have  a  little  red  cloud  to 
sail  round  in,  like  that  one  up  over  the  house,  too, 
I  should  n't  wonder." 

Molly  opened  her  eyes.     "  O,  I  don't  believe  it." 

"  You  don't  know  much  ! "  said  Miss  Faith,  su- 
perbly. "  I  should  n't  s'pose  you  would  believe  it. 
PVaps  I  '11  have  some  strawberries  too,  and  some 
ginger-snaps,  —  I  'm  not  going  to  have  any  old 
bread  and  butter  up  there,  —  O,  and  some  little 
gold  apples,  and  a  lot  of  playthings  ;  nicer  play- 
things —  why,  nicer  than  they  have  in  the  shops  in 
Boston,  Molly  Bland  !  God 's  keeping  "em  up  there 
a  purpose." 


184  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

"  Dear  me ! "  said  incredulous  Molly,  "  I  should 
just  like  to  know  who  told  you  that  much.  My 
mother  never  told  it  at  me.  Did  your  mother 
tell  it  at  you  ?  " 

"  O,  she  told  me  some  of  it,  and  the  rest  I 
thinked  out  myself." 

"  Let 's  go  and  play  One  Old  Cat,"  said  Molly, 
with  an  uncomfortable  jump ;  "  I  wish  I  had  n't 
got  to  go  to  heaven  ! " 

"  Why,  Molly  Bland !  why,  I  think  heaven 's 
splendid  !  I  've  got  my  papa  up  there,  you  know. 
'  Here  's  my  little  girl ! '  That 's  what  he  's  going 
to  say.  Mamma,  she  '11  be  there,  too,  and  we  're  all 
going  to  live  in  the  prettiest  house.  I  have  dread- 
ful hurries  to  go  this  afternoon  sometimes  when 
Phoebe 's  cross  and  won't  give  me  sugar.  They 
don't  let  you  in,  though,  'nless  you  're  a  good  girl." 

"  Who  gets  it  all  up  ? "  asked  puzzled  Molly. 

"Jesus  Christ  will  give  me  all  these  beautiful 
rings,"  said  Faith,  evidently  repeating  her  mother's 
words,  —  the  only  catechism  that  she  has  been 
taught. 

"  And  what  will  He  do  when  He  sees  you  ? "  asked 
her  mother,  coming  down  the  stairs  and  stepping 
up  behind  her. 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  185 

"  Take  me  up  in  His  arms  and  kiss  me." 

"  And  what  will  Faith  say  ?  " 

"  Fank  — you  !  "  said  the  child,  softly. 

In  another  minute  she  was  absorbed,  body  and 
soul,  in  the  mysteries  of  One  Old  Cat. 

"  But  I  don't  think  she  will  feel  much  like  being 
naughty  for  half  an  hour  to  come,"  her  mother 
said  ;  "  hear  how  pleasantly  her  words  drop  !  Such 
a  talk  quiets  her,  like  a  hand  laid  on  her  head. 
Mary,  sometimes  I  think  it  is  His  very  hand,  as 
much  as  when  He  touched  those  other  little  chil- 
dren. I  wish  Faith  to  feel  at  home  with  Him  and 
His  home.  Little  thing !  I  really  do  not  think 
that  she  is  conscious  of  any  fear  of  dying ;  I  do 
not  think  it  means  anything  to  her  but  Christ,  and 
her  father,  and  pink  blocks,  and  a  nice  time,  and 
never  disobeying  me  or  being  cross.  Many  a  time 
she  wakes  me  up  in  the  morning  talking  away  to 
herself,  and  when  I  turn  and  look  at  her,  she  says  : 
'  O  mamma,  won't  we  go  to  heaven  to-day,  you 
fink  ?  When  will  we  go,  mamma  ? ' ' 

"  If  there  had  been  any  pink  blocks  and  ginger- 
snaps  for  me  when  I  was  at  her  age,  I  should  not 
have  prayed  every  night  to  '  die  out.'  I  think  the 
horrors  of  death  that  children  live  through,  un- 


186  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

guessed    and  unrelieved,   are  awful.      Faith   may 
thank  you  all  her  life  that  she  has  escaped  them." 

"  I  should  feel  answerable  to  God  for  the  child's 
soul,  if  I  had  not  prevented  that.  I  always  wanted 
to  know  what  sort  of  mother  that  poor  little  thing 
had,  who  asked,  if  she  were  very  good  up  in  heaven, 
whether  they  would  n't  let  her  go  down  to  hell  Sat- 
urday afternoons,  and  play  a  little  while ! " 

"  I  know.  But  think  of  it,  —  blocks  and  ginger- 
snaps  ! " 

"  I  treat  Faith  just  as  the  Bible  treats  us,  by 
dealing  in  pictures  of  truth  that  she  can  under- 
stand. I  can  make  Clo  and  Abinadab  Quirk  com- 
prehend that  their  pianos  and  machinery  may  not 
be  made  of  literal  rosewood  and  steel,  but  will  be 
some  synonyme  of  the  thing,  which  will  answer 
just  such  wants  of  their  changed  natures  as  rose- 
wood and  steel  must  answer  now.  There  will  be 
machinery  and  pianos  in  the  same  sense  in  which 
there  will  be  pearl*  gates  and  harps.  Whatever 
enjoyment  any  or  all  of  them  represent  now,  some- 
thing will  represent  then. 

"But  Faith,  if  I  told  her  that  her  heavenly 
ginger-snaps  would  not  be  made  of  molasses  and 
flour,  would  have  a  cry,  for  fear  that  she  was  not 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  l8/ 

going  to  have  any  ginger-snaps  at  all ;  so,  until  she 
is  older,  I  give  her  unqualified  ginger-snaps.  The 
principal  joy  of  a  child's  life  consists  in  eating. 
Faith  begins,  as  soon  as  the  light  wanes,  to  dream 
of  that  gum-drop  which  she  is  to  have  at  bedtime. 
I  don't  suppose  she  can  outgrow  that  at  once  by 
passing  out  of  her  little  round  body.  She  must 
begin  where  she  left  off,  —  nothing  but  a  baby, 
though  it  will  be  as  holy  and  happy  a  baby  as 
Christ  can  make  it.  When  she  says  :  '  Mamma,  I 
shall  be  hungery  and  want  my  dinner,  up  there,'  I 
never  hesitate  to  tell  her  that  she  shall  have  her 
dinner.  She  would  never,  in  her  secret  heart, 
though  she  might  not  have  the  honesty  to  say  so, 
expect  to  be  otherwise  than  miserable  in  a  dinner- 
less  eternity." 

"  You  are  not  afraid  of  misleading  the  child's 
fancy?" 

"  Not  so  long  as  I  can  keep  the  two  ideas  —  that 
Christ  is  her  best  friend,  and  that  heaven  is  not 
meant  for  naughty  girls  —  pre-eminent  in  her  mind. 
And  I  sincerely  believe  that  He  would  give  her  the 
very  pink  blocks  which  she  anticipates,  no  less  than 
He  would  give  back  a  poet  his  lost  dreams,  or  you 
your  brother.  He  has  been  a  child ;  perhaps,  inci- 


188  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

dentally  to  the  unsolved  mysteries  of  atonement, 
for  this  very  reason,  —  that  He  may  know  how  to 
'  prepare  their  places '  for  them,  whose  angels  do 
always  behold  His  Father.  Ah,  you  may  be  sure 
that,  if  of  such  is  the  happy  Kingdom,  He  will  not 
scorn  to  stoop  and  fit  it  to  their  little  needs. 

"  There  was  that  poor  little  fellow  whose  guinea- 
pig  died,  —  do  you  remember  ? " 

"  Only  half;  what  was  it  ?  " 

" '  O  mamma,'  he  sobbed  out,  behind  his  hand- 
kerchief, '  don't  great  big  elephants  have  souls  ? ' 

"  '  No,  my  son.' 

" '  Nor  camels,  mamma  ? ' 

" '  No.' 

"  '  Nor  bears,  nor  alligators,  nor  chickens  ? ' 

" '  O  no,  dear.' 

"'O  mamma,  mamma!  Don't  little  CLEAN  — 
white  —  guinea-pigs  have  souls  ? ' 

"  I  never  should  have  had  the  heart  to  say  no  to 
that  ;  especially  as  we  have  no  positive  proof  to 
the  contrary. 

"  Then  that  scrap  of  a  boy  who  lost  his  little  red 
balloon  the  morning  he  bought  it,  and,  broken- 
hearted, wanted  to  know  whether  it  had  gone  to 
heaven.  Don't  I  suppose  if  he  had  been  taken 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  189 

there  himself  that  very  minute,  that  he  would  have 
found  a  little  balloon  in  waiting  for  him  ?  How 
can  I  help  it  ? " 

"  It  has  a  pretty  sound.  If  people  would  not 
think  it  so  material  and  shocking — " 

"  Let  people  read  Martin  Luther's  letter  to  his 
little  boy.  There  is  the  testimony  of  a  pillar  in 
good  and  regular  standing !  I  don't  think  you 
need  be  afraid  of  my  balloon  after  that." 

I  remembered  that  there  was  a  letter  of  his  on 
heaven,  but,  not  recalling  it  distinctly,  I  hunted  for 
it  to-night,  and  read  it  over.  I  shall  copy  it,  the 
better  to  retain  it  in  mind. 

"  Grace  and  peace  in  Christ,  my  dear  little  son. 
I  see  with  pleasure  that  thou  learnest  well,  and 
prayed  diligently.  Do  so,  my  son,  and  continue. 
When  I  come  home  I  will  bring  thee  a  pretty 
fairing. 

"I  know  a  pretty,  merry  garden  wherein  are 
many  children.  They  have  little  golden  coats,  and 
they  gather  beautiful  apples  under  the  trees,  and 
pears,  cherries,  plums,  and  wheat-plums  ;  —  they 
sing,  and  jump,  and  are  merry.  They  have  beauti- 
ful little  horses,  too,  with  gold  bits  and  silver  sad- 
dles. And  I  asked  the  man  to  whom  the  garden 


I9O  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

belongs,  whose  children  they  were.  And  he  said : 
'  They  are  the  children  that  love  to  pray  and  to 
learn,  and  are  good.'  Then  said  I :  '  Dear  man,  I 
have  a  son,  too  ;  his  name  is  Johnny  Luther.  May 
he  not  also  come  into  this  garden  and  eat  these 
beautiful  apples  and  pears,  and  ride  these  fine 
horses  ? '  Then  the  man  said  :  '  If  he  loves  to  pray 
and  to  learn,  and  is  good,  he  shall  come  into  this 
garden,  and  Lippus  and  Jost  too  ;  and  when  they 
all  come  together,  they  shall  have  fifes  and  trum- 
pets, lutes  and  all  sorts  of  music,  and  they  shall 
dance,  and  shoot  with  little  cross-bows.' 

"  And  he  showed  me  a  fine  meadow  there  in  the 
garden,  made  for  dancing.  There  hung  nothing 
but  golden  fifes,  trumpets,  and  fine  silver  cross- 
bows. But  it  was  early,  and  the  children  had 
not  yet  eaten ;  therefore  I  could  not  wait  the 
dance,  and  I  said  to  the  man :  '  Ah,  dear  sir !  I 
will  immediately  go  and  write  all  this  to  my  little 
son  Johnny,  and  tell  him  to  pray  diligently,  and  to 
learn  well,  and  to  be  good,  so  that  he  also  may  come 
to  this  garden.  But  he  has  an  Aunt  Lehne,  he 
must  bring  her  with  him.'  Then  the  man  said :  '  It 
shall  be  so  ;  go,  and  write  him  so.' 

"  Therefore,  my  dear  little  son  Johnny,  learn  and 


THE     GATES    AJAR.  IQI 

pray  away !  and  tell  Lippus  and  Jost,  too,  that  they 
must  learn  and  pray.  And  then  you  shall  come  to 
the  garden  together.  Herewith  I  commend  thee  to 
Almighty  God.  And  greet  Aunt  Lehne,  and  give 
her  a  kiss  for  my  sake. 

"  Thy  dear  Father, 

.  "  MARTINUS  LUTHER. 

"ANNO    I53<X" 


THE    GATES    AJAR. 


XIII. 

August  3. 

r  I  "HE   summer   is   sliding   quietly   away,  —  my 

•*~     desolate  summer  which  I  dreaded  ;  with  the 

dreams  gone  from  its  wild-flowers,  the  crown  from 

its  sunsets,  the  thrill  from  its  winds  and  its  singing. 

But  I  have  found  out  a  thing.  One  can  live 
without  dreams  and  crowns  and  thrills. 

I  have  not  lost  them.  They  lie  under  the  ivied 
cross  with  Roy  for  a  little  while.  They  will  come 
back  to  me  with  him.  "  Nothing  is  lost,"  she 
teaches  me.  And  until  they  come  back,  I  see  — 
for  she  shows  me  —  fields  groaning  under  their 
white  harvest,  with  laborers  very  few.  Ruth  fol- 
lowed the  sturdy  reapers,  gleaning  a  little.  I,  per- 
haps, can  do  as  much.  The  ways  in  which  I  must 
work  seem  so  small  and  insignificant,  so  pitifully 
trivial  sometimes,  that  I  do  not  even  like  to  write 
them  down  here.  In  fact,  they  are  so  small  that, 
six  months  ago,  I  did  not  see  them  at  all.  Only  to 
be  pleasant  to  old  Phoebe,  and  charitable  to  Meta 


THE    GATES    AJAR. 

Tripp,  and  faithful  to  my  not  very  interesting  little 
scholars,  and  a  bit  watchful  of  worn-out  Mrs.  Bland, 
and  —  But  dear  me,  I  won't !  They  are  so  little  ! 

But  one's  self  becomes  of  less  importance,  which 
seems  to  be  the  point. 

It  seems  very  strange  to  me  sometimes,  looking 
back  to  those  desperate  winter  days,  what  a  change 
has  come  over  my  thoughts  of  Roy.  Not  that  he 
is  any  less  —  O,  never  any  less  to  me.  But  it  is 
almost  as  if  she  had  raised  him  from  the  grave. 
Why  seek  ye  the  living  among  the  dead  ?  Her 
soft,  compassionate  eyes  shine  with  the  question 
every  hour.  And  every  hour  he  is  helping  me, 
—  ah,  Roy,  we  understand  one  another  now. 

How  he  must  love  Aunt  Winifred  !  How  pleas- 
ant the  days  will  be  when  we  can  talk  her  over,  and 
thank  her  together ! 

"  To  be  happy  because  Roy  is  happy."  I  re- 
member how  those  first  words  of  hers  struck  me. 
It  does  not  seem  to  me  impossible,  now. 

Aunt  Winifred  and   I  laugh  at  each  other  for 

talking  so  much  about   heaven.      I   see   that   the 

green  book  is  filled   with   my  questions  and   her 

answers.     The  fact  is,  not  that  we  do  not  talk  as 

9  M 


194  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

much  about  mundane  affairs  as  other  people,  but 
that  this  one  thing  interests  us  more. 

If,  instead,  it  had  been  flounces,  or  babies,  or 
German  philosophy,  the  green  book  would  have 
filled  itself  just  as  unconsciously  with  flounces,  or 
babies,  or  German  philosophy.  This  interest  in 
heaven  is  of  course  no  sign  of  especial  piety  in 
me,  nor  could  people  with  young,  warm,  uncrushed 
hopes  throbbing  through  their  days  be  expected 
to  feel  the  same.  It  is  only  the  old  principle  of 
where  the  treasure  is  —  the  heart. 

"  How  spiritual-minded  Mary  has  grown  ! "  Mrs. 
Bland  observes,  regarding  me  respectfully.  I  try 
in  vain  to  laugh  her  out  of  the  conviction.  If  Roy 
had  not  gone  before,  I  should  think  no  more,  prob- 
ably, about  the  coming  life,  than  does  the  minister's 
wife  herself. 

But  now — I  cannot  help  it  —  that  is  the  reality, 
this  the  dream ;  that  the  substance,  this  the  shadow. 

The  other  day  Aunt  Winifred  and  I  had  a  talk 
which  has  been  of  more  value  to  me  than  all  the 
rest.  Faith  was  in  bed  ;  it  was  a  cold,  rainy  even- 
ing ;  we  were  secure  from  callers  ;  we  lighted  a 
few  kindlers  in  the  parlor  grate  ;  she  rolled  up  the 
easy-chair,  and  I  took  my  cricket  at  her  feet. 


THE     GATES    AJAR.  IQ5 

"  Paul  at  the  feet  of  Gamaliel !  This  is  what 
I  call  comfort.  Now,  Auntie,  let  us  go  to  heaven 
awhile." 

"  Very  well.     What  do  you  want  there  now  ? " 

I  paused  a  moment,  sobered  by  a  thought  that 
has  been  growing  steadily  upon  me  of  late. 

"  Something  more,  Aunt  Winifred.  All  these 
other  things  are  beautiful  and  dear ;  but  I  believe 
I  want  —  God. 

"  You  have  not  said  much  about  Him.  The 
Bible  says  a  great  deal  about  Him.  You  have 
given  me  the  filling-up  of  heaven  in  all  its  pleas- 
ant promise,  but  —  I  don't  know  —  there  seems 
to  be  an  outline  wanting." 

She  drew  my  hand  up  into  hers,  smiling. 

"  I  have  not  done  my  painting  by  artistic  meth' 
ods,  I  know  ;  but  it  was  not  exactly  accidental. 

"  Tell  me,  honestly,  —  is  God  more  to  you  or  less, 
a  more  distinct  Being  or  a  more  vague  one,  than 
He  was  six  months  ago  ?  Is  He,  or  is  He  not, 
dearer  to  you  now  than  then  ? " 

I  thought  about  it  a  minute,  and  then  turned  my 
face  up  to  her. 

"  Mary,  what  a  light  in  your  eyes  !     How  is  it  ? " 

It  came  over  me  slowly,  but  it  came  with  such 


196  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

a  passion  of  gratitude  and  unworthiness,  that  I 
scarcely  knew  how  to  tell  her  —  that  He  never  has 
been  to  me,  in.  all  my  life,  what  He  is  now  at  the 
end  of  these  six  months.  He  was  once  an  abstract 
Grandeur  which  I  struggled  more  in  fear  than  love 
to  please.  He  has  become  a  living  Presence,  dear 
and  real. 

"  No  dead  fact  stranded  on  the  shore 

Of  the  oblivious  years  ; 
But  warm,  sweet,  tender,  even  yet 
A  present  help."  .... 

He  was  an  inexorable  Mystery  who  took  Roy 
from  me  to  lose  him  in  the  glare  of  a  more  inex- 
orable heaven.  He  is  a  Father  who  knew  better 
than  we  that  we  should  be  parted  for  a  while  ;  but 
He  only  means  it  to  be  a  little  while.  He  is  keep- 
ing him  for  me  to  find  in  the  flush  of  some  summer 
morning,  on  which  I  shall  open  my  eyes  no  less 
naturally  than  I  open  them  on  June  sunrises  now. 
I  always  have  that  fancy  of  going  in  the  morning. 

She  understood  what  I  could  not  tell  her,  and 
said,  "  I  thought  it  would  be  so." 

"  You,  His  interpreter,  have  done  it,"  I  answered 
her.  "  His  heaven  shows  what  he  is,  —  don't  you 
see  ?  —  like  a  friend's  letter.  I  could  no  more  go 


THE    GATES    AJAR. 

back  to  my  old  groping  relations  to  Him,  than  I 
could  make  of  you  the  dim  and  somewhat  apoc- 
ryphal Western  Auntie  that  you  were  before  I  saw 
you." 

"  Which  was  precisely  why  I  have  dealt  with  this 
subject  as  I  have,"  she  said.  "You  had  all  your 
life  been  directed  to  an  indefinite  heaven,  where  the 
glory  of  God  was  to  crowd  out  all  individuality  and 
all  human  joy  from  His  most  individual  and  human 
creatures,  till  the  '  Glory  of  God '  had  become 
nothing  but  a  name  and  a  dread  to  you.  So  I  let 
those  three  words  slide  by,  and  tried  to  bring  you 
to  them,  as  Christ  brought  the  Twelve  to  believe  in 
him,  '  for  the  works'  sake.' 

"  Yes,  my  child  ;  clinging  human  loves,  stifled 
longings,  cries  for  rest,  forgotten  hopes,  shall  have 
their  answer.  Whatever  the  bewilderment  of  beau- 
ties folded  away  for  us  in  heavenly  nature  and  art, 
they  shall  strive  with  each  other  to  make  us  glad. 
These  things  have  their  pleasant  place.  But, 
through  eternity,  there  will  be  always  something 
beyond  and  dearer  than  the  dearest  of  them.  God 
himself  will  be  first,  —  naturally  and  of  necessity, 
without  strain  or  struggle,  first? 

When  I  sat  here  last  winter  with  my  dead  in  my 


I98  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

house,  those  words  would  have  roused  in  me  an 
agony  of  wild  questionings.  I  should  have  beaten 
about  them  and  beaten  against  them,  and  cried  in 
my  honest  heart  that  they  were  false.  I  knew  that 
I  loved  Roy  more  than  I  loved  such  a  Being  as 
God  seemed  to  me  then  to  be.  Now,  they  strike 
me  as  simply  and  pleasantly  true.  The  more  I  love 
Roy,  the  more  I  love  Him.  He  loves  us  both. 

"  You  see  it  could  not  be  otherwise,"  she  went 
on,  speaking  low.  "  Where  would  you  be,  or  I,  or 
they  who  seem  to  us  so  much  dearer  and  better 
than  ourselves,  if  it  were  not  for  Jesus  Christ  ? 
What  can  heaven  be  to  us,  but  a  song  of  the  love 
that  is  the  same  to  us  yesterday,  to-day,  and  for- 
ever, —  that,  in  the  mystery  of  an  intensity  which 
we  shall  perhaps  never  understand,  could  choose 
death  and  be  glad  in  the  choosing,  and,  what  is 
more  than  that,  could  live  life  for  us  for  three-and- 
thirty  years  ? 

"I  cannot  strain  my  faith  —  or  rather  my  com- 
mon sense  —  to  the  rhapsodies  with  which  many 
people  fill  heaven.  But  it  seems  to  me  like  this  : 
A  frienu  goes  away  from  us,  and  it  may  be  seas  or 
worlds  that  lie  between  us,  and  we  love  him.  He 
leaves  behind  him  his  little  keepsakes  ;  a  lock  of 


THE    GATES    AJAR. 

hair  to  curl  about  our  fingers ;  a  picture  that  has 
caught  the  trick  of  his  eyes  or  smile ;  a  book,  a 
flower,  a  letter.  What  we  do  with  the  curling  hair, 
what  we  say  to  the  picture,  what  we  dream  over 
the  flower  and  the  letter,  nobody  knows  but  our- 
selves. People  have  risked  life  for  such  mementos. 
Yet  who  loves  the  senseless  gift  more  than  the 
giver,  —  the  curl  more  than  the  young  forehead  on 
which  it  fell,  —  the  letter  more  than  the  hand 
which  traced  it  ? 

"  So  it  seems  to  me  that  we  shall  learn  to  see  in 
God  the  centre  of  all  possibilities  of  joy.  The 
greatest  of  these  lesser  delights  is  but  the  greater 
measure  of  His  friendship.  They  will  not  mean 
less  of  pleasure,  but  more  of  Him.  They  will  not 
'  pale,'  as  Dr.  Bland  would  say.  Human  dearness 
will  wax,  not  wane,  in  heaven  ;  but  human  friends 
will  be  loved  for  love  of  him." 

"I  see;  that  helps  me;  like  a^torch  in  a  dark 
room.  But  there  will  be  shadows  in  the  corners. 
Do  you  suppose  that  we  shall  ever  fully  feel  it  in 
the  body  ? " 

"  In  the  body,  probably  not.  We  see  through  a 
glass  so  darkly  that  the  temptation  to  idolatry  is 
always  our  greatest.  Golden  images  did  not  die 


200  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

with  Paganism.  At  times  I  fancy  that,  somewhere 
between  this  world  and  another,  a  revelation  will 
come  upon  us  like  a  flash,  of  what  sin  really  is,  — 
such  a  revelation,  lighting  up  the  lurid  background 
of  our  past  in  such  colors,  that  the  consciousness 
of  what  Christ  has  done  for  us  will  be  for  a  time  as 
much  as  heart  can  bear.  After  that,  the  mystery 
will  be,  not  how  to  love  Him  most,  but  that  we  ever 
could  have  loved  any  creature  or  thing  as  much." 

"We  serve  God  quite  as  much  by  active  work  as 
by  special  prayer,  here,"  I  said  after  some  thought ; 
"  how  will  it  be  there  ? " 

"  We  must  be  busily  at  work  certainly ;  but  I 
think  there  must  naturally  be  more  communion 
with  Him  then.  Now,  this  phrase  '  communion 
with  God '  has  been  worn,  and  not  always  well 
worn. 

"  Prayer  means  to  us,  in  this  life,  more  often  pen- 
itent confession  than  happy  interchange  of  thought 
with  Him.  It  is  associated,  too,  with  aching  limbs 
and  sleepy  eyes,  and  nights  when  the  lamp  goes 
out.  Obstacles,  moral  and  physical,  stand  in  the 
way  of  our  knowing  exactly  what  it  may  mean  in 
the  ideal  of  it. 

"  My  best  conception  of  it  lies  in  the  friendship 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  2OI 

of  the  man  Christ  Jesus.  I  suppose  he  will  bear 
with  him,  eternally,  the  humanity  which  he  took 
up  with  him  from  the  Judean  hills.  I  imagine  that 
we  shall  see  him  in  visible  form  like  ourselves, 
among  us,  yet  not  of  us ;  that  he,  himself,  is  "  Gott 
mit  ihnen  "  ;  that  we  shall  talk  with  him  as  a  man 
talketh  with  his  friend.  Perhaps,  bowed  and  hushed 
at  his  dear  feet,  we  shall  hear  from  his  own  lips  the 
story  of  Nazareth,  of  Bethany,  of  Golgotha,  of  the 
chilly  mountains  where  he  used  to  pray  all  night 
long  for  us  ;  of  the  desert  places  where  he  hun- 
gered ;  of  his  cry  for  help  —  think,  Mary  —  His  ! 
—  when  there  was  not  one  in  all  the  world  to  hear 
it,  and  there  was  silence  in  heaven,  while  angels 
strengthened  him  and  man  forsook  him.  Perhaps 
his  voice  —  the  very  voice  which  has  sounded  whis- 
pering through  our  troubled  life  —  "  Could  ye  not 
watch  one  hour  ? "  —  shall  unfold  its  perplexed 
meanings  ;  shall  make  its  rough  places  plain  ;  shall 
show  us  step  by  step  the  merciful  way  by  which  he 
led  us  to  that  hour  ;  shall  point  out  to  us,  joy  by 
joy,  the  surprises  that  he  has  been  planning  for  us, 
just  as  the  old  father  in  the  story  planned  to  sur- 
prise his  wayward  boy  come  home. 

"  And  such  a  '  communion,'  —  which  is  not  too 
9* 


202  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

much,  nor  yet  enough,  to  dare  to  expect  of  a  God 
who  was  the  '  friend '  of  Abraham,  who  '  walked ' 
with  Enoch,  who  did  not  call  fishermen  his  ser- 
vants, —  such  will  be  that  '  presence  of  God,'  that 
'  adoration,'  on  which  we  have  looked  from  afar  off 
with  despairing  eyes  that  wept,  they  were  so  dazzled, 
and  turned  themselves  away  as  from  the  thing  they 
greatly  feared." 

I  think  we  neither  of  us  cared  to  talk  for  a  while 
after  this.  Something  made  me  forget  even  that  I 
was  going  to  see  Roy  in  heaven.  "Three-and-thirty 
years.  Three-and-thirty  years."  The  words  rang 
themselves  over. 

"  It  is  on  the  humanity  of  Christ,"  she  said  after 
some  musing,  "  that  all  my  other  reasons  for  hoping 
for  such  a  heaven  as' I  hope  for  rest  for  foundation. 
He  knows  exactly  what  we  are,  for  he  has  been  one 
of  us  ;  exactly  what  we  hope  and  fear  and  crave, 
for  he  has  hoped  and  feared  and  craved,  not  the 
less  humanly,  but  only  more  intensely. 

"  'If  it  were  not  sol — do  you  take  in  the  thought- 
ful tenderness  of  that  ?  A  mother  stilling  her 
frightened  child  in  the  dark,  might  speak  just  so, 
— '  if  it  were  not  so,  I  would  have  told  you'  That 
brooding  love  makes  room  for  all  that  we  can  want. 


THE  .GATES    AJAR.  2O3 

He  has  sounded  every  deep  of  a  troubled  and 
tempted  life.  Who  so  sure  as  he  to  understand 
how  to  prepare  a  place  where  troubled  and  tempted 
lives  may  grow  serene  ?  Further  than  this ;  since 
he  stands  as  our  great  Type,  no  less  in  death  and 
after  than  before  it,  he  answers  for  us  many  of  these 
lesser  questions  on  the  event  of  which  so  much  of 
our  happiness  depends. 

"  Shall  we  lose  our  personality  in  a  vague  ocean 
of  ether,  —  you  one  puff  of  gas,  I  another  ?  — 

"  He,  with  his  own  wounded  body,  rose  and  ate 
and  walked  and  talked. 

"  Is  all  memory  of  this  life  to  be  swept  away  ?  — 

"  He,  arisen,  has  forgotten  nothing.  He  waits 
to  meet  his  disciples  at  the  old,  familiar  places  ;  as 
naturally  as  if  he  had  never  been  parted  from  them, 
he  falls  in  with  the  current  of  their  thoughts. 

"  Has  any  one  troubled  us  with  fears  that  in  the 
glorified  crowds  of  heaven  we  may  miss  a  face 
dearer  than  all  the  world  to  us  ?  — 

"  He  made  himself  known  to  his  friends, — Mary, 
and  the  two  at  Emmaus,  and  the  bewildered  group 
praying  and  perplexed  in  their  bolted  room. 

"  Do  we  weary  ourselves  with  speculations  whether 
human  loves  can  outlive  the  shock  of  death  ?  — 


2O4  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

"  Mary  knew  how  He  loved  her,  when,  turning, 
she  heard  him  call  her  by  her  name.  They  knew, 
whose  hearts  '  burned  within  them  while  he  talked 
with  them  by  the  way,  and  when  he  tarried  with 
them,  the  day  being  far  spent.' " 

"  And  for  the  rest  ? " 

"  For  the  rest,  about  which  He  was  silent,  we  can 
trust  him,  and  if,  trusting,  we  please  ourselves  with 
fancies,  he  would  be  the  last  to  think  it  blame  to 
us.  There  is  one  promise  which  grows  upon  me 
the  more  I  study  it,  *  He  that  spared  not  his  own 
Son,  how  shall  he  not  also  with  him  freely  give  us 
all  things  ? '  Sometimes  I  wonder  if  that  does  not 
infold  a  beautiful  double  entendre,  a  hint  of  much 
that  you  and  I  have  conjectured,  —  as  one  throws 
down  a  hint  of  a  surprise  to  a  child. 

"  Then  there  is  that  pledge  to  those  who  seek 
first  His  kingdom  :  '  All  these  things  shall  be  added 
unto  you!  'These  things/  were  food  and  clothing, 
were  varieties  of  material  delight,  and  the  words 
were  spoken  to  men  who  lived  hungry,  beggared, 
and  died  the  death  of  outcasts.  If  this  passage 
could  be  taken  literally,  it  would  be  very  signifi- 
cant in  its  bearing  on  the  future  life  ;  for  Christ 
must  keep  his  promise  to  the  letter,  in  one  world 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  20$ 

or  another.  It  may  be  wrenching  the  verse,  not  as 
a  verse,  but  from  the  grain  of  the  argument,  to 
insist  on  the  literal  interpretation,  —  though  I  am 
not  sure." 


206  THE    GATES    AJAR. 


XIV. 

August  15. 

T  ASKED  the  other  day,  wondering  whether  all 
•*•  ministers  were  like  Dr.  Bland,  what  Uncle 
Forceythe  used  to  believe  about  heaven. 

"Very  much  what  I  do,"  she  said.  "These  ques- 
tions were  brought  home  to  him,  early  in  life,  by 
the  death  of  a  very  dear  sister ;  he  had  thought 
much  about  them.  I  think  one  of  the  things  that 
so  much  attached  his  people  to  him  was  the  way 
he  had  of  weaving  their  future  life  in  with  this,  till 
it  grew  naturally  and  pleasantly  into  their  frequent 
thought.  O  yes,  your  uncle  supplied  me  with  half 
of  my  proof-texts." 

Aunt  Winifred  has  not  looked  quite  well  of  late, 
I  fancy ;  though  it  may  be  only  fancy.  She  has 
not  spoken  of  it,  except  one  day  when  I  told  her 
that  she  looked  pale.  It  was  the  heat,  she  said. 

20th. 

Little  Clo  came  over  to-night.  I  believe  she 
thinks  Aunt  Winifred  the  best  friend  she  has  in  the 


THE     GATES     AJAR.  2O/ 

world.  Auntie  has  become  much  attached  to  all 
her  scholars,  and  has  a  rare  power  of  winning  her 
way  into  their  confidence.  They  come  to  her  with 
all  their  little  interests,  —  everything,  from  saving 
their  souls  to  trimming  a  bonnet.  Clo,  however,  is 
the  favorite,  as  I  predicted. 

She  looked  a  bit  blue  to-night,  as  girls  will  look  ; 
in  fact,  her  face  always  has  a  tinge  of  sadness  about 
it.  Aunt  Winifred,  understanding  at  a  glance  that 
the  child  was  not  in  a  mood  to  talk  before  a  third, 
led  her  away  into  the  garden,  and  they  were  gone  a 
long  time.  When  it  grew  dark,  I  saw  them  coming 
up  the  path,  Clo's  hand  locked  in  her  teacher's,  and 
her  face,  which  was  wet,  upturned  like  a  child's. 
They  strolled  to  the  gate,  lingered  a  little  to  talk, 
and  then  Clo  said  good  night  without  coming  in. 

Auntie  sat  for  a  while  after  she  had  gone,  think- 
ing her  over,  I  could  see.  "  Poor  thing ! "  she  said 
at  last,  half  to  herself,  half  to  me,  —  "  poor  little 
foolish  thing !  This  is  where  the  dreadful  individ- 
uality of  a  human  soul  irks  me.  There  comes  a 
point,  beyond  which  you  cant  help  people." 

"  What  has  happened  to  Clo  ? " 

"  Nothing,  lately.  It  has  been  happening  for  two 
years.  Two  miserable  years  are  an  eternity,  at 


208  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

Clo's  age.  It  is  the  old  story,  —  a  summer  board- 
er ;  a  little  flirting ;  a  little  dreaming  ;  a  little 
pain  ;  then  autumn,  and  the  nuts  dropping  on  the 
leaves,  and  he  was  gone,  —  and  knew  not  what  he 
did, —  and  the  child  waked  up.  There  was  the 
future ;  to  bake  and  sweep,  to  go  to  sewing-circles, 
and  sing  in  the  choir,  and  bear  the  moonlight 
nights,  —  and  she  loved  him.  She  has  lived 
through  two  years  of  it,  and  she  loves  him  now. 
Reason  will  not  reach  such  a  passion  in  a  girl  like 
Clo.  I  did  not  tell  her  that  she  would  put  it  away 
with  other  girlish  things,  and  laugh  at  it  herself 
some  happy  day,  as  women  have  laughed  at  their 
young  fancies  before  her ;  partly  because  that 
would  be  a  certain  way  of  repelling  her  confidence, 
—  she  does  not  believe  it,  and  my  believing  could 
not  make  her  ;  partly  because  I  am  not  quite  sure 
about  it  myself.  Clo  has  a  good  deal  of  the  woman 
about  her  ;  her  introspective  life  is  intense.  She 
may  cherish  this  sweet  misery  as  she  does  her  mu- 
sical tastes,  till  it  has  struck  deep  root.  There  is 
nothing  in  the  excellent  Mrs.  Bentley's  household, 
nor  in  Homer  anywhere,  to  draw  the  girl  out  from 
herself  in  time  to  prevent  the  dream  from  becom- 
ing a  reality." 


THE    GATES    AJAR. 

"  Poor  little  thing  !     What  did  you  say  to  her  ? " 

"  You  ought  to  have  heard  what  she  said  to  me  ! 
I  wish  I  were  at  liberty  to  tell  you  the  whole  story. 
What  troubles  her  most  is  that  it  is  not  going  to 
help  the  matter  any  to  die.  '  O  Mrs.  Forceythe/ 
she  says,  in  a  tone  that  is  enough  to  give  the  heart- 
ache, even  to  such  an  old  woman  as  Mrs.  Forceythe, 
'  O  Mrs.  Forceythe,  what  is  going  to  become  of  me 
up  there  ?  He  never  loved  me,  you  see,  and  he 
never,  never  will,  and  he  will  have  some  beautiful, 
good  wife  of  his  own,  and  I  won't  have  anybody  I 
For  I  can't  love  anybody  else,  —  I  Ve  tried  ;  I  tried 
just  as  hard  as  I  could  to  love  my  cousin  'Bin  ;  he's 
real  good,  and  —  I  'm  —  afraid  'Bin  likes  me,  though 
I  guess  he  likes  his  carpet-sweepers  better.  O, 
sometimes  I  think,  and  think,  till  it  seems  as  if  I 
could  not  bear  it !  I  don't  see  how  God  can  make 
me  happy.  I  wish  I  could  be  buried  up  and  go  to 
sleep,  and  never  have  any  heaven  !' ' 

"  And  you  told  her  —  ? " 

"  That  she  should  have  him  there.  That  is,  if 
not  himself,  something,  —  somebody  who  would  so 
much  more  than  fill  his  place,  that  she  would  never 
have  a  lonely  or  unloved  minute.  Her  eyes  bright- 
ened, and  shaded,  and  pondered,  doubting.  She 


2IO  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

'  did  n't  see  how  it  could  ever  be.'  I  told  her  not 
to  try  and  see  how,  but  to  leave  it  to  Christ.  He 
knew  all  about  this  little  trouble  of  hers,  and  he 
would  make  it  right. 

"  '  Will  he  ? '  she  questioned,  sighing  ;  '  but  there 
are  so  many  of  us !  There  's  'Bin,  and  a  plenty 
more,  and  I  don't  see  how  it 's  going  to  be  smoothed 
out.  Everything  is  in  a  jumble,  Mrs.  Forceythe, 
don't  you  see  ?  for  some  people  cant  like  and  keep 
liking  so  many  times.'  Something  came  into  my 
mind  about  the  rough  places  that  shall  be  made 
plain,  and  the  crooked  things  straight.  I  tried  to 
explain  to  her,  and  at  last  I  kissed  away  her  tears, 
and  sent  her  home,  if  not  exactly  comforted,  a  little 
less  miserable,  I  think,  than  when  she  came.  Ah, 
well,  —  I  wonder  myself  sometimes  about  these 
'crooked  things';  but  still  I  never  doubt" 

She  finished  her  sentence  somewhat  hurriedly, 
and  half  started  from  her  chair,  raising  both  hands 
with  a  quick,  involuntary  motion  that  attracted  my 
notice.  The  lights  came  in  just  then,  and,  unless 
I  am  much  mistaken,  her  face  showed  paler  than 
usual  ;  but  when  I  asked  her  if  she  felt  faint,  she 
said,  '  O  no,  I  believe  I  am  a  little  tired,  and  will 
go  to  bed." 


THE     GATES    AJAR.  211 

September  i. 

I  am  glad  that  the  summer  is  over.  This  heat 
has  certainly  worn  on  Aunt  Winifred,  with  that 
kind  of  wear  which  slides  people  into  confirmed 
invalidism.  I  suppose  she  would  bear  it  in  her 
saintly  way,  as  she  bears  everything,  but  it  would 
be  a  bitter  cup  for  her.  I  know  she  was  always 
pale,  but  this  is  a  paleness  which  — 

Night. 
A  dreadful  thing  has  happened  ! 

I  was  in  the  middle  of  my  sentence,  when  I  heard 
a  commotion  in  the  street,  and  a  child's  voice  shout- 
ing incoherently  something  about  the  doctor,  and 
"  mother  's  killed  !  O,  mother  's  killed  !  mother  's 
burnt  to  death  ! "  I  was  at  the  window  in  time 
to  see  a  blond-haired  girl  running  wildly  past  the 
house,  and  to  see  that  it  was  Molly  Bland. 

At  the  same  moment  I  saw  Aunt  Winifred 
snatching  her  hat  from  its  nail  in  the  entry.  She 
beckoned  to  me  to  follow,  and  we  were  half-way 
over  to  the  parsonage  before  I  had  a  distinct 
thought  of  what  I  was  about. 

We  came  upon  a  horrible  scene.  Dr.  Bland  was 
trying  to  do  everything  alone  ;  there  was  not  a 
woman  in  the  house  to  help  him,  for  they  have 


212  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

never  been  able  to  keep  a  servant,  and  none  of  the 
neighbors  had  had  time  to  be  there  before  us.  The 
poor  husband  was  growing  faint,  I  think.  Aunt 
Winifred  saw  by  a  look  that  he  could  not  bear 
much  more,  sent  him  after  Molly  for  the  doctor,  and 
took  everything  meantime  into  her  own  charge. 

I  shall  not  write  down  a  word  of  it.  It  was  a 
sight  that,  once  seen,  will  never  leave  me  as  long 
as  I  live.  My  nerves  are  thoroughly  shaken  by  it, 
and  it  must  be  put  out  of  thought  as  far  as  possible. 

It  seems  that  the  little  boy  —  the  baby — crept 
into  the  kitchen  by  himself,  and  began  to  throw 
the  contents  of  the  match-box  on  the  stove,  "  to 
make  a  bonfire,"  the  poor  little  fellow  said.  In  five 
minutes  his  apron  was  ablaze.  His  mother  was  on 
the  spot  at  his  first  cry,  and  smothered  the  little 
apron,  and  saved  the  child,  but  her  dress  was  mus- 
lin, and  everybody  was  too  far  off  to  hear  her  at 
first,  —  and  by  the  time  her  husband  came  in  from 
the  garden  it  was  too  late. 

She  is  living  yet.  Her  husband,  pacing  the 
room  back  and  forth,  and  crouching  on  his  knees 
by  the  hour,  is  praying  God  to  let  her  die  before 
the  morning. 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  213 

Morning. 

There  is  no  chance  of  life,  the  doctor  says.  But 
he  has  been  able  to  find  something  that  has  lessened 
her  sufferings.  She  lies  partially  unconscious. 

Wednesday  night. 

Aunt  Winifred  and  I  were  over  to  the  parsonage 
to-night,  when  she  roused  a  little  from  her  stupor 
and  recognized  us.  She  spoke  to  her  husband,  and 
kissed  me  good  by,  and  asked  for  the  children. 
They  were  playing  softly  in  the  next  room  ;  we 
sent  for  them,  and  they  came  in,  —  the  four  un- 
conscious, motherless  little  things,  —  with  the  sun- 
light in  their  hair. 

The  bitterness  of  death  came  into  her  marred 
face  at  sight  of  them,  and  she  raised  her  hands  to 
Auntie  —  to  the  only  other  mother  there  —  with  a 
sudden  helpless  cry  :  "  I  could  bear  it,  I  could  bear 
it,  if  it  were  n't  for  them.  Without  any  mother  all 
their  lives,  —  such  little  things,  —  and  to  go  away 
where  I  can't  do  a  single  thing  for  them  !" 

Aunt  Winifred  stooped  down  and  spoke  low,  but 
decidedly. 

"  You  will  do  for  them.  God  knows  all  about  it. 
He  will  not  send  you  away  from  them.  You  shall 


214  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

be  just  as  much  their  mother,  every  day  of  their 
lives,  as  you  have  been  here.  Perhaps  there  is 
something  to  do  for  them  which  you  never  could 
have  done  here.  He  sees.  He  loves  them.  He 
loves  you." 

If  I  could  paint,  I  might  paint  the  look  that 
struck  through  and  through  that  woman's  dying 
face  ;  but  words  cannot  touch  it.  If  I  were  Aunt 
Winifred,  I  should  bless  God  on  my  knees  to-night 
for  having  shown  me  how  to  give  such  ease  to  a 
soul  in  death. 

Thursday  morning. 

God  is  merciful.     Mrs.  Bland  died  at  five  o'clock. 

loth. 

How  such  a  voice  from  the  heavens  shocks  one 
out  of  the  repose  of  calm  sorrows  and  of  calm  joys. 
This  has  come  and  gone  so  suddenly  that  I  cannot 
adjust  it  to  any  quiet  and  trustful  thinking  yet. 

The  whole  parish  mourns  excitedly ;  for,  though 
they  worked  their  minister's  wife  hard,  they  loved 
her  well.  I  cannot  talk  it  over  with  the  rest.  It 
jars.  Horror  should  never  be  dissected.  Besides, 
my  heart  is  too  full  of  those  four  little  children  with 
the  sunlight  in  their  hair  and  the  unconsciousness 
in  their  eyes. 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  215 

I5th. 

Mrs.  Quirk  came  over  to-day  in  great  perplexity. 
She  had  just  come  from  the  minister's. 

"  I  don't  know  what  we  're  a  goin'  to  do  with 
him  ! "  she  exclaimed  in  a  gush  of  impatient,  un- 
comprehending sympathy ;  "  you  can't  let  a  man 
take  on  that  way  much  longer.  He  '11  worry  him- 
self sick,  and  then  we  shall  either  lose  him  or  have 
to  pay  his  bills  to  Europe  !  Why,  he  jest  stops  in 
the  house,  and  walks  his  study  up  and  down,  day 
and  night ;  or  else  he  jest  sets  and  sets  and  don't 
notice  nobody  but  the  children.  Now  I  've  jest 
ben  over  makin'  him  some  chicken-pie,  —  he  used 
to  set  a  sight  by  my  chicken-pie,  —  and  he  made 
believe  to  eat  it,  'cause  I  'd  ben  at  the  trouble,  I 
suppose,  but  how  much  do  you  suppose  he  swal- 
lowed ?  Jest  three  mouthfuls !  Thinks  says  I,  I 
won't  spend  my  time  over  chicken-pie  for  the 
afflicted  agin,  and  on  ironing-day,  too  !  When  I 
knocked  at  the  study  door,  he  said  '  Come  in,'  and 
stopped  his  walkin'  and  turned  as  quick. 

" '  O,'  says  he,  'good  morning.  I  thought  it  was 
Mrs.  Forceythe.' 

"  I  told  him  no,  I  was  n't  Mrs.  Forceythe,  but 
I  'd  come  to  comfort  him  in  his  sorrer  all  the 


2l6  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

same.  But  that 's  the  only  thing  I  have  agin  our 
minister.  He  won't  be  comforted.  Mary  Ann 
Jacobs,  who  's  been  there  kind  of  looking  after  the 
children  and  things  for  him,  you  know,  sence  the 
funeral  —  she  says  he  's  asked  three  or  four  times 
for  you,  Mrs.  Forceythe.  There 's  ben  plenty  of 
his  people  in  to  see  him,  but  you  have  n't  ben  nigh 
him,  Mary  Ann  says." 

"  I  stayed  away  because  I  thought  the  presence 
of  friends  at  this  time  would  be  an  intrusion," 
Auntie  said  ;  "  but  if  he  would  like  to  see  me,  that 
alters  the  case ;  I  will  go,  certainly." 

"  I  don't  know,"  suggested  Mrs.  Quirk,  looking 
over  the  top  of  her  spectacles,  —  I  s'pose  it 's 
proper  enough,  but  you  bein'  a  widow,  you  know, 
and  his  wife  —  " 

Aunt  Winifred's  eyes  shot  fire.  She  stood  up 
and  turned  upon  Mrs.  Quirk  with  a  look  the  like 
of  which  I  presume  that  worthy  lady  had  never 
seen  before,  and  is  not  likely  to  see  soon  again  (it 
gave  the  beautiful  scorn  of  a  Zenobia  to  her  fair, 
slight  face),  moved  her  lips  slightly,  but  said  noth- 
ing, put  on  her  bonnet,  and  went  straight  to  Dr. 
Eland's. 

The   minister,  they  told  her,  was  in  his  study. 


THE    GATES     AJAR.  2I/ 

She  knocked  lightly  at  the  door,  and  was  bidden 
in  a  lifeless  voice  to  enter. 

Shades  and  blinds  were  drawn,  and  the  glare  of 
the  sun  quite  shut  out.  Dr.  Bland  sat  by  his 
study-table,  with  his  face  upon  his  hands.  A  Bi- 
ble lay  open  before  him.  It  had  been  lately  used  ; 
the  leaves  were  wet. 

He  raised  his  head  dejectedly,  but  smiled  when 
he  saw  who  it  was.  He  had  been  thinking  about 
her,  he  said,  and  was  glad  that  she  had  come. 

I  do  not  know  all  that  passed  between  them,  but 
I  gather,  from  such  hints  as  Auntie  in  her  uncon- 
sciousness throws  out,  that  she  had  things  to  say 
which  touched  some  comfortless  places  in  the  man's 
heart.  No  Greek  and  Hebrew  "  original,"  no  pol- 
ished dogma,  no  link  in  his  stereotyped  logic,  not 
one  of  his  eloquent  sermons  on  the  future  state, 
came  to  his  relief. 

These  were  meant  for  happy  days.  They  rang 
cold  as  steel  upon  the  warm  needs  of  an  afflicted 
man.  Brought  face  to  face,  and  sharply,  with  the 
blank  heaven  of  his  belief,  he  stood  up  from  before 
his  dead,  and  groped  about  it,  and  cried  out  against 
it  in  the  bitterness  of  his  soul. 

"  I  had  no  chance  to  prepare  myself  to  bow  to 

10 


2l8  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

the  will  of  God,"  he  said,  his  reserved  ministerial 
manner  in  curious  contrast  with  the  caged  way  in 
which  he  was  pacing  the  room,  —  "I  had  no 
chance.  I  am  taken  by  surprise,  as  by  a  thief 
in  the  night.  I  had  a  great  deal  to  say  to  her,  and 
there  was  no  time.  She  could  tell  me  what  to  do 
with  my  poor  little  children.  I  wanted  to  tell  her 
other  things.  I  wanted  to  tell  her  —  Perhaps  we 
all  of  us  have  our  regrets  when  the  Lord  removes 
our  friends ;  we  may  have  done  or  left  undone 
many  things  ;  we  might  have  made  them  happier. 
My  mind  does  not  rest  with  assurance  in  its  con- 
ceptions of  the  heavenly  state.  If  I  never  can  tell 
her  —  " 

He  stopped  abruptly,  and  paced  into  the  darkest 
shadows  of  the  shadowed  room,  his  face  turned 
away. 

"  You  said  once  some  pleasant  things  about 
heaven  ? "  he  said  at  last,  half  appealingly,  stopping 
in  front  of  her,  hesitating  ;  like  a  man  and  like  a 
minister,  hardly  ready  to  come  with  all  the  learning 
of  his  schools  and  commentators  and  sit  at  the  feet 
of  a  woman. 

She  talked  with  him  for  a  time  in  her  unobtrusive 
way,  deferring,  when  she  honestly  could,  to  his  cler- 


THE     GATES    AJAR. 

ical  judgment,  and  careful  not  to  wound  him  by 
any  word  ;  but  frankly  and  clearly,  as  she  always 
talks. 

When  she  rose  to  go  he  thanked  her  quietly. 

"  This  is  a  somewhat  novel  train  of  thought  to 
me,"  he  said ;  "  I  hope  it  may  not  prove  an  un- 
scriptural  one.  I  have  been  reading  the  Book  of 
Revelation  to-day  with  these  questions  especially  in 
mind.  We  are  never  too  old  to  learn.  Some  pas- 
sages may  be  capable  of  other  interpretations  than 
I  have  formerly  given  them.  No  matter  what  I 
wish,  you  see,  I  must  be  guided  by  the  Word  of  my 
God." 

Auntie  says  that  she  never  respected  the  man  so 
much  as  she  did  when,  hearing  those  words,  she 
looked  up  into  his  haggard  face,  convulsed  with  its 
human  pain  and  longing. 

"  I  hope  you  do  not  think  that  /  am  not  guided 
by  the  Word  of  God,"  she  answered.  "  I  mean  to 
be." 

"  I  know  you  mean  to  be,"  he  said  cordially.  "  I 
do  not  say  that  you  are  not.  I  may  come  to  see 
that  you  are,  and  that  you  are  right.  It  will  be  a 
peaceful  day  for  me  if  I  can  ever  quite  agree  with 
your  methods  of  reasoning.  But  I  must  think 


22O  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

these  things  over.  I  thank  you  once  more  for 
coming.  Your  sympathy  is  grateful  to  me." 

Just  as  she  closed  the  door  he  called  her  back. 

"  See,"  he  said,  with  a  saddened  smile.  "  At 
least  I  shall  never  preach  this  again.  It  seems  to 
me  that  life  is  always  undoing  for  us  something 
that  we  have  just  laboriously  done." 

He  held  up  before  her  a  mass  of  old  blue  manu- 
script, and  threw  it,  as  he  spoke,  upon  the  embers 
left  in  his  grate.  It  smoked  and  blazed  up  and 
burned  out. 

It  was  that  sermon  on  heaven  of  which  there  is 
an  abstract  in  this  journal. 

20th. 

Aunt  Winifred  hired  Mr.  Tripp's  gray  this  after- 
noon, and  drove  to  East  Homer  on  some  unexplained 
errand.  She  did  not  invite  me  to  go  with  her, 
and  Faith,  though  she  teased  impressively,  was  left 
at  home.  Her  mother  was  gone  till  late,  —  so  late 
that  I  had  begun  to  be  anxious  about  her,  and 
heard  through  the  dark  the  first  sound  of  the  buggy 
wheels  with  great  relief.  She  looked  very  tired 
when  I  met  her  at  the  gate.  She  had  not  been 
able,  she  said,  to  accomplish  her  errand  at  East 


THE     GATES    AJAR.  221 

Homer,  and  from  there  had  gone  to  Worcester  by 
railroad,  leaving  Old  Gray  at  the  East  Homer 
Eagle  till  her  return.  She  told  me  nothing  more, 
and  I  asked  no  questions. 


222  THE    GATES    AJAR. 


XV. 

Sunday. 

'I  7AITH  has  behaved  like  a  witch  all  day.     She 
I 

-*•  knocked  down  three  crickets  and  six  hymn- 
books  in  church  this  morning,  and  this  afternoon 
horrified  the  assembled  and  devout  congregation 
by  turning  round  in  the  middle  of  the  long  prayer, 
and,  in  a  loud  and  distinct  voice,  asking  Mrs.  Quirk, 
for  "  'nother  those  pepp'mints  such  as  you  gave  me 
one  Sunday  a  good  many  years  ago,  you  'member." 
After  church,  her  mother  tried  a  few  Bible  ques- 
tions to  keep  her  still. 

"  Faith,  who  was  Christ's  father  ?  " 

"  Jerusalem  !  "  said  Faith,  promptly. 

"  Where  did  his  parents  take  Jesus  when  they 
fled  from  Herod?" 

"  O,  to  Europe.    Of  course  I  knew  that !    Every- 
body goes  to  Europe." 

To-night  when  her  mother  had  put  her  to  bed, 
she  catre  down  laughing. 

"  Faith  does  seem  to  have  a  hard  time  with  the 
Lord's  Prayer.     To-night,  being  very  sleepy  and  in 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  223 

a  hurry  to  finish,  she  proceeded  with  great  solem- 
nity :  —  '  Our  Father  who  art  in  heaven,  hallowed 
be  thy  name  ;  six  days  shalt  thou  labor  and  do  all 
thy  work,  and  —  Oh  !  ' 

"I  was  just  thinking  how  amused  her  father 
must  be." 

Auntie  says  many  such  things.  I  cannot  ex- 
plain how  pleasantly  they  strike  me,  nor  how  they 
help  me. 


Dr.  Bland  gave  us  a  good  sermon  yesterday. 
There  is  an  indescribable  change  in  all  his  sermons. 
There  is  a  change,  too,  in  the  man,  and  that  some- 
thing more  than  the  haggardness  of  grief.  I  not 
only  respect  him  and  am  sorry  for  him,  but  I  feel 
more  ready  to  be  taught  by  him  than  ever  before. 
A  certain  indefinable  humanness  softens  his  eyes 
and  tones,  and  seems  to  be  creeping  into  everything 
that  he  says.  Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  his  people 
say  that  they  have  never  heard  him  speak  such 
pleasant,  helpful  things  concerning  his  and  their 
relations  to  God.  I  met  him  the  other  night,  com- 
ing away  from  his  wife's  grave,  and  was  struck  by 
the  expression  of  his  face.  I  wondered  if  he  were 


224  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

not  slowly  finding  the  "  peaceful  day,"  of  which  he 
told  Aunt  Winifred. 

She,  by  the  way,  has  taken  another  of  her  mys- 
terious trips  to  Worcester. 

3oth. 

We  were  wondering  to-day  where  it  will  be,  —  I 
mean  heaven. 

"It  is  impossible  to  do  more  than  wonder," 
Auntie  said,  "  though  we  are  explicitly  told  that 
there  will  be  new  heavens  and  a  new  earth,  which 
seems,  if  anything  can  be  taken  literally  in  the 
Bible,  to  point  to  this  world  as  the  future  home  of 
at  least  some  of  us." 

"  Not  for  all  of  us,  of  course  ? " 

"  I  don't  feel  sure.  I  know  that  somebody  spent 
his  valuable  time  in  estimating  that  all  the  people 
who  have  lived  and  died  upon  the  earth  would 
cover  it,  alive  or  buried,  twice  over  ;  but  I  know 
that  somebody  else  claims  with  equal  solemnity  to 
have  discovered  that  they  could  all  be  buried  in 
ihe  State  of  Pennsylvania  !  But  it  would  be  of 
little  consequence  if  we  could  not  all  find  room 
here,  since  there  must  be  other  provision  for  us." 

"  Why  ? " 

"  Certainly  there   is  '  a  place '  in  which  we  are 


THE     GATES     AJAR.  22$ 

promised  that  we  shall  be  '  with  Christ,'  this  world 
being  yet  the  great  theatre  of  human  life  and 
battle-ground  of  Satan  ;  no  place,  certainly,  in 
which  to  confine  a  happy  soul  without  prospect 
of  release.  The  Spiritualistic  notion  of  '  circles ' 
of  dead  friends  revolving  over  us  is  to  me  intoler- 
able. I  want  my  husband  with  me  when  I  need 
him,  but  I  hope  he  has  a  place  to  be  happy  in, 
which  is  out  of  this  woful  world. 

"  The  old  astronomical  idea,  stars  around  a  sun, 
and  systems  around  a  centre,  and  that  centre  the 
Throne  of  God,  is  not  an  unreasonable  one.  Isaac 
Taylor,  among  his  various  conjectures,  inclines,  I 
fancy,  to  suppose  that  the  sun  of  each  system  is  the 
heaven  of  that  system.  Though  the  glory  of  God 
may  be  more  directly  and  impressively  exhibited  in 
one  place  than  in  another,  we  may  live  in  different, 
planets,  and  some  of  us,  after  its  destruction  and 
renovation,  on  this  same  dear  old,  happy  and  mis- 
erable, loved  and  maltreated  earth.  I  hope  I  shall 
be  one  of  them.  I  should  like  to  come  back  and 
build  me  a  beautiful  home  in  Kansas,  —  I  mean  in 
what  was  Kansas,  —  among  the  happy  people  and 
the  familiar,  transfigured  spots  where  John  and  I 
worked  for  God  so  long  together.  That  —  with 
10*  o 


226  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

my  dear  Lord  to  see  and  speak  with  every  day  — 
would  be  '  Heaven  our  Home.'  " 

"  There  will  be  no  days,  then  ? " 

"  There  will  be  succession  of  time.  There  may 
not  be  alternations  of  twenty-four  hours  dark  or 
light,  but  '  I  use  with  thee  an  earthly  language,'  as 
the  wife  said  in  that  beautiful  little  'Awakening,' 
of  Therrmin's.  Do  you  remember  it  ?  Do  read  it 
over,  if  you  have  n't  read  it  lately. 

"  As  to  our  coming  back  here,  there  is  an  echo 
to  Peter's  assertion,  in  the  idea  of  a  world  under  a 
curse,  destroyed  and  regenerated,  —  the  atonement 
of  Christ  reaching,  with  something  more  than  po- 
etic force,  the  very  sands  of  the  earth  which  he  trod 
with  bleeding  feet  to  make  himself  its  Saviour. 
That  makes  me  feel  —  don't  you  see  ?  —  what  a 
taint  there  is  in  sin.  If  dumb  dust  is  to  have  such 
awful  cleansing,  what  must  be  needed  for  you  and 
me  ? 

"  How  many  pleasant  talks  we  have  had  about 
these  things,  Mary  !  Well,  it  cannot  be  long,  at  the 
longest,  before  we  know,  even  as  we  are  known." 

I  looked  at  her  smiling  white  face,  —  it  is  always 
very  white  now,  —  and  something  struck  slowly 
through  me,  like  a  chill. 


THE     GATES    AJAR.  22/ 

October  16,  midnight. 

There  is  no  such  thing  as  sleep  at  present. 
Writing  is  better  than  thinking. 

Aunt  Winifred  went  again  to  Worcester  to-day. 
She  said  that  she  had  to  buy  trimming  for  Faith's 
sack. 

She  went  alone,  as  usual,  and  Faith  and  I  kept 
each  other  company  through  the  afternoon,  —  she 
on  the  floor  with  Mary  Ann,  I  in  the  easy-chair 
with  Macaulay.  As  the  light  began  to  fall  level  on 
the  floor,  I  threw  the  book  aside, — being  at  the  end 
of  a  volume,  —  and,  Mary  Ann  having  exhausted 
her  attractions,  I  surrendered  unconditionally  to 
the  little  maiden. 

She  took  me  up  garret,  and  down  cellar,  on  top 
of  the  wood-pile,  and  into  the  apple-trees  ;  I  fath- 
omed the  mysteries  of  Old  Man's  Castle  and  Still 
Palm ;  I  was  her  grandmother,  I  was  her  baby,  I 
was  a  rabbit,  I  was  a  chestnut  horse,  I  was  a  watch- 
dog, I  was  a  mild-tempered  giant,  I  was  a  bear, 
"  warranted  not  to  eat  little  girls,"  I  was  a  roaring 
hippopotamus  and  a  canary-bird,  I  was  Jeff  Davis 
and  I  was  Moses  in  the  bulrushes,  and  of  what  I 
was  the  time  faileth  me  to  tell. 

It  comes  over  me  with  a  curious,  mingled  sense 


228  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

of  the  ludicrous  and  the  horrible,  that  I  should 
have  spent  the  afternoon  like  a  baby  and  almost  as 
happily,  laughing  out  with  the  child,  past  and  future 
forgotten,  the  tremendous  risks  of  "  I  spy  "  absorb- 
ing all  my  present ;  while  what  was  happening  was 
happening,  and  what  was  to  come  was  coming. 
Not  an  echo  in  the  air,  not  a  prophecy  in  the  sun- 
shine, not  a  note  of  warning  in  the  song  of  the 
robins  that  watched  me  from  the  apple-boughs ! 

As  the  long,  golden  afternoon  slid  away,  we 
came  out  by  the  front  gate  to  watch  for  the  child's 
mother.  I  was  tired,  and,  lying  back  on  the  grass, 
gave  Faith  some  pink  and  purple  larkspurs,  that 
she  might  amuse  herself  in  making  a  chain  of 
them.  The  picture  that  she  made  sitting  there  on 
the  short,  dying  grass  —  the  light  which  broke  all 
about  her  and  over  her  at  the  first,  creeping  slowly 
down  and  away  to  the  west,  her  little  fingers  linking 
the  rich,  bright  flowers  tube  into  tube,  the  dimple 
on  her  cheek  and  the  love  in  her  eyes  —  has  pho- 
tographed itself  into  my  thinking. 

How  her  voice  rang  out,  when  the  wheels 
sounded  at  last,  and  the  carriage,  somewhat  slowly 
driven,  stopped  !  "  Mamma,  mamma !  see  what 
I  Ve  got  for  you,  mamma  !  " 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  22Q 

Auntie  tried  to  step  from  the  carriage,  and  called 
me  :  "  Mary,  can  you  help  me  a  little  ?  I  am  — 
tired." 

I  went  to  her,  and  she  leaned  heavily  on  my  arm, 
and  we  came  up  the  path. 

"  Such  a  pretty  little  chain,  all  for  you,  mamma," 
began  Faith,  and  stopped,  struck  by  her  mother's 
look. 

"  It  has  been  a  long  ride,  and  I  am  in  pain.  I 
believe  I  will  lie  right  down  on  the  parlor  sofa. 
Mary,  would  you  be  kind  enough  to  give  Faith  her 
supper  and  put  her  to  bed  ?  " 

Faith's  lip  grieved. 

"  Cousin  Mary  is  n't  you,  mamma.  I  want  to  be 
kissed.  You  have  n't  kissed  me." 

Her  mother  hesitated  for  a  moment ;  then  kissed 
her  once,  twice  ;  put  both  arms  about  her  neck  ; 
and  turned  her  face  to  the  wall  without  a  word. 

"  Mamma  is  tired,  dear,"  I  said  ;  "  come  away." 

She  was  lying  quite  still  when  I  had  done  what 
was  to  be  done  for  the  child,  and  had  come  back. 
The  room  was  nearly  dark.  I  sat  down  on  my 
cricket  by  her  sofa. 

"  Shall  Phoebe  light  the  lamp  ? " 

"  Not  just  yet." 


23O  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

"  Can't  you  drink  a  cup  of  tea  if  I  bring  it  ? " 

"  Not  just  yet" 

"  Did  you  find  the  sack-trimming  ? "  I  ventured, 
after  a  pause. 

I  believe  so,  —  yes."  She  drew  a  little  package 
from  her  pocket,  held  it  a  moment,  then  let  it  roll  to 
the  floor  forgotten.  When  I  picked  it  up,  the  soft 
tissue-paper  wrapper  was  wet  and  hot  with  tears. 

"  Mary  ? " 

"  Yes." 

"  I  never  thought  of  the  little  trimming  till  the 
last  minute.  I  had  another  errand." 

I  waited. 

"  I  thought  at  first  I  would  not  tell  you  just  yet. 
But  I  suppose  the  time  has  come  ;  it  will  be  no 
more  easy  to  put  it  off.  I  have  been  to  Worcester 
all  these  times  to  see  a  doctor." 

I  bent  my  head  in  the  dark,  and  listened  for  the 
rest 

"  He  has  his  reputation  ;  they  said  he  could  help 
me  if  anybody  could.  He  thought  at  first  he 
could.  But  to-day  —  Mary,  see  here." 

She  walked  feebly  towards  the  window,  where  a 
faint,  gray  light  struggled  in,  and  opened  the  bosom 
of  her  dress.  .  . 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  23! 

There  was  silence  between  us  for  a  long  while 
after  that ;  she  went  back  to  the  sofa,  and  I  took 
her  hand  and  bowed  my  face  over  it,  and  so  we  sat. 

The  leaves  rustled  out  of  doors.  Faith,  up 
stairs,  was  singing  herself  to  sleep  with  a  droning 
sound. 

"  He  talked  of  risking  an  operation,"  she  said,  at 
length,  "  but  decided  to-day  that  it  was  quite  use- 
less. I  suppose  I  must  give  up  and  be  sick  now ; 
I  am  feeling  the  reaction  from  having  kept  up  so 
long.  Pie  thinks  I  shall  not  suffer  a  very  great 
deal.  He  thinks  he  can  relieve  me,  and  that  it 
may  be  soon  over." 

"  There  is  no  chance  ?  " 

"  No  chance." 

I  took  both  of  her  hands,  and  cried  out,  I  believe, 
as  I  did  that  first  night  when  she  spoke  to  me  of 
Roy,  "  Auntie,  Auntie,  Auntie ! "  and  tried  to  think 
what  I  was  doing,  but  only  cried  out  the  more. 

"  Why,  Mary  ! "  she  said,  —  "  why,  Mary  ! "  and 
again,  as  before,  she  passed  her  soft  hand  to  and 
fro  across  my  hair,  till  by  and  by  I  began  to  think, 
as  I  had  thought  before,  that  I  could  bear  anything 
which  God  who  loved  us  all  —  who  surely  loved  us 
all  —  should  send. 


232  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

So  then,  after  I  had  grown  still,  she  began  to  tell 
me  about  it  in  her  quiet  voice,  and  the  leaves 
rustled,  and  Faith  had  sung  herself  to  sleep,  and  I 
listened  wondering.  For  there  was  no  pain  in  the 
quiet  voice,  —  no  pain,  nor  tone  of  fear.  Indeed, 
it  seemed  to  me  that  I  detected,  through  its  subdued 
sadness,  a  secret,  suppressed  buoyancy  of  satisfac- 
tion, with  which  something, struggled. 

"  And  you  ?  "  I  asked,  turning  quickly  upon  her. 

"I  should  thank  God  with  all  my  heart,  Mary, if 
it  were  not  for  Faith  and  you.  But  it  is  for  Faith 
and  you.  That 's  all." 

When  I  had  locked  the  front  door,  and  was 
creeping  up  here  to  my  room,  my  foot  crushed 
something,  and  a  faint,  wounded  perfume  came  up. 
It  was  the  little  pink  and  purple  chain. 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  233 


XVI. 

October  17. 

Lord  God  a'mighty  help  us!  but  His 
ways  are  past  finding  out.  What  with  one 
thing  and  another  thing,  that  child  without  a 
mother,  and  you  with  the  crape  not  yet  rusty  for 
Mr.  Roy'l,  it  does  seem  to  me  as  if  His  manner  of 
treating  folks  beats  all !  But  I  tell  you  this,  Miss 
Mary,  my  dear ;  you  jest  say  your  prayers  reg'lar 
and  stick  to  Him,  and  He  '11  pull  you  through, 
sure  !  " 

This  was  what  Phoebe  said  when  I  told  her. 

November  8. 

To-night,  for  the  first  time,  Auntie  fairly  gave  up 
trying  to  put  Faith  to  bed.  She  had  insisted  on  it 
until  now,  crawling  up  by  the  banisters  like  a 
wounded  thing.  This  time  she  tottered  and  sank 
upon  the  second  step.  She  cried  out,  feebly :  "  I 
am  afraid  I  must  give  it  up  to  Cousin  Mary. 
Faith  ! "  —  the  child  clung  with  both  hands  to  her, 
—  "  Faith,  Faith  !  Mother's  little  girl  ? " 


234  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

It  was  the  last  dear  care  of  motherhood  yielded  ; 
the  last  link  snapped.  It  seemed  to  be  the  very 
bitterness  of  parting. 

I  turned  away,  that  they  might  bear  it  together, 
they  two  alone. 

Yet  I  think  that  took  away  the  sting. 

The  days  are  slipping  away  now  very  quietly, 
and  —  to  her  I  am  sure,  and  to  me  for  her  sake  — 
very  happily. 

She  suffers  less  than  I  had  feared,  and  she  lies 
upon  the  bed  and  smiles,  and  Faith  comes  in  and 
plays  about,  and  the  cheery  morning  sunshine  falls 
on  everything,  and  when  her  strong  hours  come,  we 
have  long  talks  together,  hand  clasped  in  hand. 

Such  pleasant  talks  !  We  are  quite  brave  to 
speak  of  anything,  since  we  know  that  what  is  to 
be  is  best  just  so,  and  since  we  fear  no  parting.  I 
tell  her  that  Faith  and  I  will  soon  learn  to  shut  our 
eyes  and  think  we  see  her,  and  try  to  make  it  almost 
the  same,  for  she  will  never  be  very  far  away,  will 
she  ?  And  then  she  shakes  her  head  smiling,  for  it 
pleases  her,  and  she  kisses  me  softly.  Then  we 
dream  of  how  it  will  all  be,  and  how  we  shall  love 
and  try  to  please  each  other  quite  as  much  as  now. 


THE     GATES    AJAR.  235 

"It  will  be  like  going  around  a  corner,  don't  you 
see?"  she  says.  "You  will  know  that  I  am  there 
all  the  while,  though  hidden,  and  that  if  you  call  me 
I  shall  hear."  Then  we  talk  of  Faith,  and  of  how 
I  shall  comfort  her ;  that  I  shall  teach  her  this,  and 
guard  her  from  that,  and  how  I  shall  talk  with  her 
about  heaven  and  her  mother.  Sometimes  Faith 
comes  up  and  wants  to  know  what  we  are  saying, 
and  lays  poor  Mary  Ann,  sawdust  and  all,  upon  the 
pillow,  and  wants  "  her  toof-ache  kissed  away."  So 
Auntie  kisses  away  the  dolly's  "  toof-ache " ;  and 
kisses  the  dolly's  little  mother,  sometimes  with  a 
quiver  on  her  lips,  but  more  often  with  a  smile  in 
her  eyes,  and  Faith  runs  back  to  play,  and  her 
laugh  ripples  out,  and  her  mother  listens — listens  — 

Sometimes,  too,  we  talk  of  some  of  the  people  for 
whom  she  cares ;  of  her  husband's  friends ;  of  her 
scholars,  or  Dr.  Bland,  or  Clo,  or  poor  'Bin  Quirk, 
or  of  somebody  down  town  whom  she  was  planning 
to  help  this  winter.  Little  Clo  comes  in  as  often 
as  she  is  strong  enough  to  see  her,  and  sends  over 
untold  jellies  and  blanc-manges,  which  Faith  and  I 
have  to  eat.  "  But  don't  let  the  child  know  that," 

% 

Auntie  says. 

But  more  often  we  talk  of  the  life  which  she  is 


236  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

so  soon  to  begin  ;  of  her  husband  and  Roy  ;  of  what 
she  will  try  to  say  to  Christ ;  how  much  dearer  He 
has  grown  to  her  since  she  has  lain  here  in  pain  at 
His  bidding,  and  how  He  helps  her,  at  morning  and 
at  eventide  and  in  the  night-watches. 

We  talk  of  the  trees  and  the  mountains  and  the 
lilies  in  the  garden,  on  which  the  glory  of  the  light 
that  is  not  the  light  of  the  sun  may  shine ;  of  the 
"  little  brooks  "  by  which  she  longs  to  sit  and  sing 
to  Faith  ;  of  the  treasures  of  art  which  she  may 
fancy  to  have  about  her ;  of  the  home  in  which  her 
husband  may  be  making  ready  for  her  coming,  and 
wonder  what  he  has  there,  and  if  he  knows  how 
near  the  time  is  now. 

But  I  notice  lately  that  she  more  often  and  more 
quickly  wearies  of  these  things  ;  that  she  comes 
back,  and  comes  back  again  to  some  loving  thought 
—  as  loving  as  a  child's  —  of  Jesus  Christ.  He 
seems  to  be  —  as  she  once  said  she  tried  that  He 
should  be  to  Faith  —  her  "  best  friend." 

Sometimes,  too,  we  wonder  what  it  means  to 
pass  out  of  the  body,  and  what  one  will  be  first 
conscious  of. 

"  I  used  to  have  a  very  human,  and  by  no  means 
slight,  dread  of  the  physical  pain  of  death,"  she 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  237 

said  to-day ;  "  but,  for  some  reason  or  other,  that  is 
slowly  leaving  me.  I  imagine  that  the  suffering  of 
any  fatal  sickness  is  worse  than  the  immediate 
process  of  dissolution.  Then  there  is  so  much 
beyond  it  to  occupy  one's  thoughts.  One  thing  I 
have  thought  much  about ;  it  is  that,  whatever  may 
be  our  first  experience  after  leaving  the  body,  it  is 
not  likely  to  be  a  revolutionary  one.  It  is  more  in 
analogy  with  God's  dealings  that  a  quiet  process,  a 
gentle  accustoming,  should  open  our  eyes  on  the 
light  that  would  blind  if  it  came  in  a  flash.  Per- 
haps we  shall  not  see  Him,  —  perhaps  we  could  not 
bear  it  to  see  Him  at  once.  It  may  be  that  the  faces 
i)f  familiar  human  friends  will  be  the  first  to  greet 
us  ;  it  may  be  that  the  touch  of  the  human  hand 
dearer  than  any  but  His  own  shall  lead  us,  as  we 
are  able,  behind  the  veil,  till  we  are  a  little  used  to 
the  glory  and  the  wonder,  and  lead  us  so  to  Him. 

"  Be  that  as  it  may,  and  be  heaven  where  it  may, 
I  am  not  afraid.  With  all  my  guessing  and  my 
studying  and  my  dreaming  over  these  things,  I  am 
only  a  child  in  the  dark.  '  Nevertheless,  I  am  not 
afraid  of  the  dark.'  God  bless  Mr.  Robertson  for 
saying  that !  I  'm  going  to  bless  him  when  I  see 
him.  How  pleasant  it  will  be  to  see  him,  and  some 


238  THE     GATES     AJAR. 

other  friends  whose  faces  I  never  saw  in  this  world  ! 
David,  for  instance,  or  Paul,  or  Cowper,  or  President 
Lincoln,  or  Mrs.  Browning.  The  only  trouble  is 
that  /  am  nobody  to  them  !  However,  I  fancy  that 
they  will  let  me  shake  hands  with  them. 

"  No,  I  am  quite  willing  to  trust  all  these  things 
to  God. 

'  And  what  if  much  be  still  unknown  ? 

Thy  Lord  shall  teach  thee  that, 
When  thou  shalt  stand  before  His  throne, 
Or  sit  as  Mary  sat' 

I  may  find  them  very  different  from  what  I  have 
supposed.  I  know  that  I  shall  find  them  infinitely 
more  satisfying  than  I  have  supposed.  As  Schiller 
said  of  his  philosophy,  '  Perhaps  I  may  be  ashamed 
of  my  raw  design,  at  sight  of  the  true  original. 
This  may  happen  ;  I  expect  it ;  but  then,  if  reality 
bears  no  resemblance  to  my  dreams,  it  will  be  a 
more  majestic,  a  more  delightful  surprise.' 

"  I  believe  nothing  that  God  denies.  I  cannot 
overrate  the  beauty  of  his  promise.  So  it  surely 
can  have  done  no  harm  for  me  to  take  the  comfort 
of  my  fancying  till  I  am  there  ;  and  what  a  comfort 
it  has  been  to  me,  God  only  knows.  I  could 
scarcely  have  borne  some  things  without  it." 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  239 

"  You  are  never  afraid  that  anything  proving  a 
little  different  from  what  you  expect  might  —  " 

"  Might  disappoint  me  ?  No  ;  I  have  settled 
that  in  my  heart  with  God.  I  do  not  think  I  shall 
be  disappointed.  The  truth  is,  he  has  obviously 
not  opened  the  gates  which  bar  heaven  from  our 
sight,  but  he  has  as  obviously  not  shut  them  ;  they 
stand  ajar,  with  the  Bible  and  reason  in  the  way,  to 
keep  them  from  closing  ;  surely  we  should  look  in 
as  far  as  we  can,  and  surely,  if  we  look  with  rever- 
ence, our  eyes  will  be  holden,  that  we  may  not 
cheat  ourselves  with  mirages.  And,  as  the  little 
Swedish  girl  said,  the  first  time  she  saw  the  stars : 
'  O  father,  if  the  wrong  side  of  heaven  is  so  beauti- 
ful, what  must  the  right  side  be  ?  " 

January. 

I  write  little  now,  for  I  am  living  too  much.  The 
days'  are  stealing  away  and  lessening  one  by  one, 
and  still  Faith  plays  about  the  room,  though  very 
softly  now,  and  still  the  cheery  sunshine  shimmers 
in,  and  still  we  talk  with  clasping  hands,  less  often 
and  more  pleasantly.  Morning  and  noon  and  even- 
ing come  and  go  ;  the  snow  drifts  down  and  the 
rain  falls  softly ;  clouds  form  and  break  and  hurry 
past  the  windows  ;  shadows  melt  and  lights  are 


240  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

shattered,  and  little  rainbows  are  prisoned  by  the 
icicles  that  hang  from  the  eaves. 

I  sit  and  watch  them,  and  watch  the  sick-lamp 
flicker  in  the  night,  and  watch  the  blue  morning 
crawl  over  the  hills ;  and  the  old  words  are  stealing 
down  my  thought :  That  is  the  substance,  this  the 
shadow  ;  that  the  reality,  this  the  dream. 

I  watch  her  face  upon  the  pillow  ;  the  happy  se- 
cret on  its  lips ;  the  smile  within  its  eyes.  It  is 
nearly  a  year  now  since  God  sent  the  face  to  me. 
What  it  has  done  for  me  He  knows ;  what  the  next 
year  and  all  the  years  are  to  be  without  it,  He 
knows,  too. 

It  is  slipping  away,  —  slipping.  And  I  —  must 
—  lose  it. 

Perhaps  I  should  not  have  said  what  I  said  to- 
night ;  but  being  weak  from  watching,  and  seeing 
how  glad  she  was  to  go,  seeing  how  all  the  peace 
was  for  her,  all  the  pain  for  us,  I  cried,  "  O  Auntie, 
Auntie,  why  can't  we  go  too  ?  Why  cant  Faith 
and  I  go  with  you  ? " 

But  she  answered  me  only,  "  Mary,  He  knows." 

We  will  be  brave  again  to-morrow.  A  little  more 
sunshine  in  the  room !  A  little  more  of  Faith  and 
the  dolly ! 


THE     GATES     AJAR.  24! 

The  Sabbath. 

She  asked  for  the  child  at  bedtime  to-night,  and 
I  laid  her  down  in  her  night-dress  on  her  mother's 
arm.  She  kissed  her,  and  said  her  prayers,  and 
talked  a  bit  about  Mary  Ann,  and  to-morrow,  and 
her  snow  man.  I  sat  over  by  the  window  in  the 
dusk,  and  watched  a  little  creamy  cloud  that  was 
folding  in  the  moon.  Presently  their  voices  grew 
low,  and  at  last  Faith's  stopped  altogether.  Then 
I  heard  in  fragments  this  :  — 

"  Sleepy,  dear  ?  But  you  won't  have  many  more 
talks  with  mamma.  Keep  awake  just  a  minute, 
Faith,  and  hear  —  can  you  hear  ?  Mamma  will 
never,  never  forget  her  little  girl ;  she  won't  go 
away  very  far  ;  she  will  always  love  you.  Will  you 
remember  as  long  as  you  live  ?  She  will  always  see 
you,  though  you  can't  see  her,  perhaps.  Hush,  my 
darling,  don't  cry !  Is  n't  God  naughty  ?  No,  God 
is  good  ;  God  is  always  good.  He  won't  take 
mamma  a  great  way  ,off.  One  more  kiss  ?  There  ! 
now  you  may  go  to  sleep.  One  more!  Come, 
Cousin  Mary." 

June  6. 

It  is  a  long  time  since  I  have  written  here.  I 
did  not  want  to  open  the  book  till  I  was  sure  that 


242  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

I  could  open  it  quietly,  and  could  speak  as  she 
would  like  to  have  me  speak,  of  what  remains  to  be 
written. 

But  a  very  few  words  will  tell  it  all. 

It  happened  so  naturally  and  so  happily,  she  was 
so  glad  when  the  time  came,  and  she  made  me  so 
glad  for  her  sake,  that  I  cannot  grieve.  I  say  it 
from  my  honest  heart,  I  cannot  grieve.  In  the 
place  out  of  which  she  has  gone,  she  has  left  me 
peace.  I  think  of  something  that  Miss  Procter 
said  about  the  opening  of  that  golden  gate, 

"  round  which  the  kneeling  spirits  wait 

The  halo  seems  to  linger  round  those  kneeling  closest  to  the  door  : 
The  joy  that  lightened  from  that  place  shines  still  upon  the  watch- 
er's face." 

I  think  more  often  of  some  things  that  she  herself 
said  in  the  very  last  of  those  pleasant  talks,  when, 
turning  a  leaf  in  her  little  Bible,  she  pointed  out  to 
me  the  words  :  — 

"  It  is  expedient  for  you  that  I  go  away  ;  for,  if  I 
go  not  away,  the  Comforter  will  not  come." 

It  was  one  spring-like  night,  —  the  twenty-ninth 
of  March. 

She  had  been  in  less  pain,  and  had  chatted  and 


THE    GATES    AJAR.  243 

laughed  more  with  us  than  for  many  a  day.  She 
begged  that  Faith  might  stay  till  dark,  and  might 
bring  her  Noah's  ark  and  play  down  upon  the  foot 
of  the  bed  where  she  could  see  her.  I  sat  in  the 
rocking-chair  with  my  face  to  the  window.  We  did 
not  light  the  lamps. 

The  night  came  on  slowly.  Showery  clouds 
flitted  by,  but  there  was  a  blaze  of  golden  color  be- 
hind them.  It  broke  through  and  scattered  them  ; 
it  burned  them  and  melted  them  ;  it  shot  great  pink 
and  purple  jets  up  to  the  zenith  ;  it  fell  and  lay  in 
amber  mist  upon  the  hills.  A  soft  wind  swept  by, 
and  darted  now  and  then  into  the  glow,  and  shifted 
it  about,  color  away  from  color,  and  back  again. 

"  See,  Faith  ! "  she  said  softly ;  "  put  down  the 
little  camel  a  minute,  and  look ! "  and  added  after, 
but  neither  to  the  child  nor  to  me,  it  seemed  :  "  At 
eventide  there  shall  be  light."  Phoebe  knocked 
presently,  and  I  went  out  to  see  what  was  wanted, 
and  planned  a  little  for  Auntie's  breakfast,  and 
came  back. 

Faith,  with  her  little  ark,  was  still  playing  quietly 
upon  the  bed.  I  sat  down  again  in  my  rocking- 
chair  with  my  face  to  the  window.  Now  and  then 
the  child's  voice  broke  the  silence,  asking  Where 


244  THE     GATES    AJAR. 

should  she  put  the  elephant,  and  was  there  room 
there  for  the  yellow  bird  ?  and  now  and  then  her 
mother  answered  her,  and  so  presently  the  skies 
had  faded,  and  so  the  night  came  on. 

I  was  thinking  that  it  was  Faith's  bedtime,  and 
that  I  had  better  light  the  lamp,  when  a  few  dis- 
tinct, hurried  words  from  the  bed  attracted  my 
attention. 

"  Faith,  I  think  you  had  better  kiss  mamma  now, 
and  get  down." 

There  was  a  change  in  the  voice.  I  was  there 
in  a  moment,  and  lifted  the  child  from  the  pillow, 
where  she  had  crept.  But  she  said,  "  Wait  a  min- 
ute, Mary;  wait  a  minute," — for  Faith  clung  to 
her,  with  one  hand  upon  her  cheek,  softly  patting  it. 

I  went  over  and  stood  by  the  window. 

It  was  her  mother  herself  who  gently  put  the 
little  fingers  away  at  last.  "  Mother's  own  little 
girl  !  Good  night,  my  darling,  my  darling." 

So  I  took  the  child  away  to  Phoebe,  and  came 
back,  and  shut  the  door. 

"  I  thought  you  might  have  some  message  for 
Roy,"  she  said. 

"  Now  ?  " 

"  Now,  I  think." 


THE     GATES     AJAR.  245 

We  had  often  talked  of  this,  and  she  had  prom- 
ised to  remember  it,  whatever  it  might  be.  So  I 
told  her  —  But  I  will  not  write  what  I  told  her. 

I  saw  that  she  was  playing  weakly  with  her 
wedding-ring,  which  hung  very  loosely  below  its 
little  worn  guard. 

"  Take  the  little  guard,"  she  said,  "  and  keep  it 
for  Faith  ;  but  bury  the  other  with  me :  he  put  it 
on  :  nobody  else  must  take  it  —  " 

The  sentence  dropped,  unfinished. 

I  crept  up  on  the  bed  beside  her,  for  she  seemed 
to  wish  it.  I  asked  if  I  should  light  the  lamp,  but 
she  shook  her  head.  The  room  seemed  light,  she 
said,  quite  light  She  wondered  then  if  Faith  were 
asleep,  and  if  she  would  waken  early  in  the  morn- 
ing. 

After  that  I  kissed  her,  and  then  we  said  nothing 
more,  only  presently  she  asked  me  to  hold  her  hand. 

It  was  quite  dark  when  she  turned  her  face  at 
last  towards  the  window. 

"  John  ! "  she  said,  —  "  why,  John  ! " 

******* 

They  came  in,  with  heads  uncovered  and  voices 
hushed,  to  see  her,  in  the  days  while  she  was  lying 
down  stairs  among  the  flowers. 


246  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

Once  when  I  thought  that  she  was  alone,  I  went 
in,  —  it  was  at  twilight,  —  and  turned,  startled  by 
a  figure  that  was  crouched  sobbing  on  the  floor. 

"  O,  I  want  to  go  too,  /  want  to  go  too !  "  it  cried. 

"  She  's  ben  there  all  day  long,"  said  Phoebe, 
wiping  her  eyes,  "and  she  won't  go  home  for  a 
mouthful  of  victuals,  poor  creetur  !  but  she  jest  sets 
there  and  cries  and  cries,  an'  there  's  no  stoppin'  of 
her!" 

It  was  little  Clo. 

At  another  time,  I  was  there  with  fresh  flowers, 
when  the  door  opened,  creaking  a  little,  and  'Bin 
Quirk  came  in  on  tiptoe,  trying  in  vain  to  still  the 
noise  of  his  new  boots.  His  eyes  were  red  and  wet, 
and  he  held  out  to  me  timidly  a  single  white  carna- 
tion. 

"  Could  you  put  it  somewhere,  where  it  would  n't 
do  any  harm  ?  I  walked  way  over  to  Worcester 
and  back  to  get  it.  If  you  could  jest  hide  it  under 
the  others  out  of  sight,  seems  to  me  it  would  do 
me  a  sight  of  good  to  feel  it  was  there,  you  know." 

I  motioned  to  him  to  lay  it  himself  between  her 
fingers. 

"O,  I  darsn't.  I  'm  not  fit,  7'm  not.  She'd 
rether  have  you." 


THE    GATES    AJAR. 

But  I  told  him  that  I  knew  she  would  be  as 
pleased  that  he  should  give  it  to  her  himself  as  she 
was  when  he  gave  her  the  China  pinks  on  that  dis- 
tant summer  day.  So  the  great  awkward  fellow 
bent  down,  as  simply  as  a  child,  as  tenderly  as  a 
woman,  and  left  the  flower  in  its  place. 

"  She  liked  'em,"  he  faltered  ;  "  maybe,  if  what 
she  used  to  say  is  all  so,  she  '11  like  'em  now.  She 
liked  'em  better  than  she  did  machines.  I  've  just 
got  my  carpet-sweeper  through  ;  I  was  thinking 
how  pleased  she  'd  be  ;  I  wanted  to  tell  her.  If  I 
should  go  to  the  good  place,  —  if  ever  I  do  go,  it 
will  be  just  her  doin's,  —  I  '11  tell  her  then,  maybe, 
I  —  " 

He  forgot  that  anybody  was  there,  and,  sobbing, 
hid  his  face  in  his  great  hands. 

So  we  are  waiting  for  the  morning  when  the 
gates  shall  open,  —  Faith  and  I.  I,  from  my  stiller 
watches,  am  not  saddened  by  the  music  of  her  life. 
I  feel  sure  that  her  mother  wishes  it  to  be  a  cheery 
life.  I  feel  sure  that  she  is  showing  me,  who  will 
have  no  motherhood  by  which  to  show  myself,  how 
to  help  her  little  girl. 


248  THE    GATES    AJAR. 

And  Roy,  —  ah,  well,  and  Roy,  —  he  knows. 
Our  hour  is  not  yet  come.  If  the  Master  will  that 
we  should  be  about  His  Father's  business,  what  is 
that  to  us  ? 


THE     END. 


Cambridge  :  Printed  by  Welch,  Bigelow,  and  Company. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY,  LOS  ANGELES 

COLLEGE  LIBRARY 

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